Karachi, Pakistan – Prime Minister Imran Khan has pledged to implement existing Pakistani laws that would grant citizenship to all Afghan and Bangladeshi refugees who were born on Pakistani soil, a major departure from previous policy.

Pakistan is home to more than 1.39 million registered Afghan refugees, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), many of whom have been resident in the country for more than 30 years.

There are also more than 200,000 ethnic Bangladeshis in Pakistan, most of whom live in the southern city of Karachi. Many of them were stranded in the city after the war in 1971 when Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, gained independence.

Afghan refugees, meanwhile, have poured into Pakistan from its western neighbour for decades, first fleeing the Soviet invasion in the 1970s, and then the civil war that ensued.

Since 2001, a fresh influx of refugees followed the US invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent Taliban war to take back the country.

“These poor migrants from Bangladesh, they have been here for more than 40 years, their children are grown now … we will give them passports and ID cards, as well as those Afghans whose children have been raised here, who were born here, we will also give them [citizenship],” said Khan in Karachi on Sunday.

“This happens in every country in the world, why is it that here we are inflicting such an injustice on these people?”

The announcement is a marked departure from the policy followed by previous governments, and could see the prime minister face confrontation with the country’s powerful military, which has often blamed Afghan refugees for violence in Pakistan.

Pakistani law allows citizenship for all those born in the country, with the exception of children of foreign diplomats, “enemy aliens” and those who migrated away from territories that became Pakistan after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. 

The legal status of Afghan refugees resident in Pakistan expires on September 30, although it is widely expected to be extended by the government, as has been done numerous times in the past.

Repatriation of refugees

The UNHCR welcomed the development, but said it was awaiting specifics on how Khan’s government intended to move forward.

“UNHCR welcomes the statement on Afghan children born in Pakistan,” spokesperson Dan McNorton told Al Jazeera. “We look forward to working closely with the government of Pakistan on this issue in the coming weeks.”

The Afghan government did not immediately comment.

Since 2014, Pakistan has been actively encouraging the repatriation of Afghan refugees, with the numbers of refugees returning spiking during that year.

Rights groups say Pakistani authorities have carried out a sustained campaign of intimidation and harassment of refugees since a 2014 attack on a Peshawar school killed more than 140 people, an attack that Pakistan blames groups based in Afghanistan for.

The rate of repatriation dropped last year, as violence spiked and the Afghan Taliban stepped up their attacks on civilian targets across the country.

This year, at least 9,821 Afghan refugees have repatriated to their homeland, according to UNHCR data. Birth rates among the refugee community, however, are high, and at least 14,682 Afghan refugee births were also recorded during the same period, the data shows. 

Tense relations

Relations between the two neighbours have remained tense for years, with Afghanistan blaming Pakistan for hosting the Afghan Taliban leadership and its allies, a claim that Pakistan denies.

Pakistan claims Afghanistan has not acted against the Pakistan Taliban, which it claims is based in eastern Afghanistan.

On Saturday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi led a high-level delegation on a visit to Kabul, with both sides pledging their commitment to a new comprehensive dialogue framework.

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.

[Warning: Some viewers may find images in this video distressing]

It was what everyone here dreaded – two dead children.

After sifting through a home turned to rubble, rescue workers finally found the bodies of three-year-old Nabil and new-born baby girl Sumood.

Just moments earlier on Saturday, a Saudi-UAE military alliance, which has been carrying out air attacks on Yemen since March 2015, bombed their home in Saada province’s Marran district, an impoverished area less than 40km from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, footage sent to Al Jazeera by Houthi rebels appeared to show.

“These were civilians, they were little kids,” said one of the rescuers, as their lifeless bodies lay strewn next to him on a rock.

“What was their guilt, why were they killed?” said another, who managed to rescue other members of their family after the devastating attack.

Local news channel Saada News reported that the children were from an internally displaced family who had recently relocated to Marran after their home was previously destroyed.

But in what has become the norm for millions of Yemenis, families have had to repeatedly resettle when the sounds of planes pass overhead and bombs dropping intensify.

Air raids intensify

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been carrying out air raids on Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, in an attempt to reinstate the internationally recognised government of President Abu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Hadi’s government was toppled by Houthi rebels in late 2014 after the rebels stormed south from their stronghold of Saada, and captured large parts of the north.

With logistical support from the US, the Saudi-UAE alliance has carried out more than 16,000 raids on Houthi-held areas in an attempt to reverse their gains.

These attacks have targeted weddings, hospitals as well as water and electricity plants, killing and wounding thousands.

According to the UN, at least 10,000 people have been killed in the war, but the death toll that has not been updated in years and is certain to be far higher.

In July, the last month where statistics of air raids were available, Saudi and UAE jets launched 277 raids, 43 percent of which targeted non-military sites.

The Yemen Data Project listed 108 air raids on Saada province, a region straddling the Saudi border that has been ravaged by violence since the start of the conflict.

Hodeidah, which has also been the scene of fierce fighting in recent weeks, was targeted at least 101 times, the monitoring group said.

Dire humanitarian situation

The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has been pushing the warring parties to restart peace talks and arrived in Sanaa on Sunday to meet with the Houthis as fighting resumed in the port city.

Griffiths’ visit to the capital comes after his push for peace talks last week with representatives from Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the rebels fell apart before they could officially begin.

That meeting, which would have been the first in nearly two years, was scheduled to take place in the Swiss city of Geneva on September 6.

The Houthi delegation, however, did not show up, accusing the UN of failing to guarantee their safe return to Sanaa and secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman.

Lise Grande, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, and David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, are expected to hold a press conference in in the town of Bajil on Monday to discuss the latest on the humanitarian situation.

On Saturday, the Houthis signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN to take critically ill patients abroad for treatment.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday that 12 health conditions had been identified, including patients with cancer, chronic diseases and congenital anomalies.

The UN has warned that continued conflict in Hodeidah, the entry point for the bulk of Yemen’s commercial imports and aid supplies, could trigger a famine.

An estimated 8.4 million people are at risk of starvation in Yemen, according to the UN.

The country’s three-year war has ensnared millions in what the European Union called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million in dire need of assistance.

Image: Aytug Can Sencar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Moynaq, Uzbekistan – The sun was setting over the ship graveyard in the town of Moynaq, Uzbekistan, when electronic music began thrumming through the air.

The warm, salty desert wind carried the sounds across the flat landscape, some 1,200 kilometres from the country’s capital, to the delight of thousands of spectators.

Friday, September 14 made history not only for the 13,500 local residents but also for Uzbekistan’s young generation. 

The first electronic music festival in the country and the first music festival in Moynaq was an event many people had been waiting for. 

Uzbekistan was until recently one of the world’s most isolated countries. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, it has been gradually opening up.

The Stihia festival, with avant-garde sounds and ambient techno played by DJs from Berlin, Georgia, Russia and Uzbekistan, was part of the new vision.

The location was not accidental. 

The ship graveyard, littered with the skeletons of vessels rusting away in the sand, is what remains of the mighty Aral Sea. 

It is a monument to one of the worst man-made environmental disasters.

The festival organisers wanted to raise awareness of the desiccation of the Aral and call for a more responsible approach in the notoriously water-hungry region.

Some attendees even believed the music might have a magical touch, hoping that perhaps techno beats and good energy could encourage the sea’s revitalisation.

Back in the 1960s, the Aral Sea fell victim to Soviet engineering projects.

Amu Daria and Syr Daria, two rivers that once flowed into the sea, were diverted to support the USSR’s growing cotton industry. 

In 1954, Turkmenistan launched the construction of the Karakum Canal bringing water from the top of the Amu Daria river, across the Karakum Desert, to cotton fields and taps in the parched capital of Ashkhabad.

“Growing cotton, making textiles and growing wheat were more profitable than fish. So they did a trade-off,” Michael H Glantz, director of the Consortium for Capacity Building at the University of Colorado, and a long-time activist to save the Aral, told Al Jazeera. “The water sits there and evaporates anyway. So why not use it and build new canals, so that the water goes to the desert, which lacks water but is otherwise a productive soil?”

In Soviet times, the relationship between Moscow and the Central Asian republics had a colonial dynamic, where the peripheries’ scarce resources boosted the centre’s economic might.

“Do we care about some fish and fishing industry or do we want to feed the textile industry in Russia?” said Glantz. “The cotton used to go to factories in Moscow and other places on export, so it was a money maker. But the money didn’t go to the Uzbeks or Turkmen”.

As a result, Moynaq, a thriving port and one of the most important fishing industry towns in the former Soviet Union, sank into oblivion.

By the mid-1990s, the coastline retreated over 100 kilometres and the sea lost three-quarters of its water. Soon after, all the fish died.

The Aral Sea disaster destroyed the town’s main source of employment, which resulted in high outward migration. 

Before the fish factory finally closed down in 1998, its employees were processing imported fish.

Today, the ship graveyard, where local boys hang out, is the last reminder of the town’s lost identity.

The sea’s decay also had environmental consequences. 

The runoff from the cotton fields left the ground waters in Moynaq contaminated with chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers, which affected the local population’s health.

The area turned into a salt desert where dust storms rage for over 90 days a year, spreading poisonous salts.

“During the perestroika time, the Aral Sea catastrophe was seen as analogous with Chernobyl, since both radioactive substances from Chernobyl and blown-away sands from the bottom of the dried-up Aral Sea could be found all over the Eurasian Continent,” Tetsuro Chida, associate professor from the Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, told Al Jazeera.

“The Soviet scholars and authorities had foreseen the shrinkage of the Aral Sea when they took developmental measures in the basin, but they did not know what would happen as a result of its diminishment,” Chida said.

Muhabbad, a 35-year-old resident of Moynaq, says the effects of the sea’s decay are felt daily. 

“The weather is getting worse every year. The water is salty and undrinkable and we are suffering from various health issues,” she told Al Jazeera. “Oncological diseases have become way too common.” 

She attended the music festival with her 15-year-old niece Sabrina. While they enjoyed themselves, Muhabbad said the future of Moynaq is unclear.

“We would like other countries to help us to address our problems. But I don’t know if it can happen. I’m 35 and I have never seen the Aral Sea,” she said. 

It’s like with climate change. No one wants to give up on fossil fuels or coal. And the same is with the Aral – no one wants to give up water. So who is going to make the sacrifice?

Michael H Glantz, director of the Consortium for Capacity Building at the University of Colorado and activist to save the Aral

For those who came from Tashkent, the capital, the event provided a reason for many to visit a faraway corner of the country and take a closer look at the effects of the environmental catastrophe.

“The people who listen to electronic music and who came from Tashkent and Samarkand are young professionals. They read a lot and their voice is important,” said Anna, a journalist from the capital, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s clear that we cannot change the situation, but we can draw some lessons from the catastrophe. We understand that the misuse of resources had caused a global problem. We have to learn from the past to avoid the same mistakes in the future.”

At present, both the UNDP and the Uzbek government are trying to address the effects the ecological disaster has had on local populations.

Their efforts focus on improving people’s health, education and environmental security, promoting entrepreneurship and developing local infrastructure.

Thanks to a dam built between the northern and southern parts of the sea, Kazakhstan managed to save its own part of the Aral.  That dam, however, has disrupted the flow of water into Uzbekistan.

There is little hope that the Aral Sea will return to Moynaq.

“The Uzbeks, the Turkmen, the Kazakhs and then the Tajiks would all have to agree to give up water for irrigation of cotton, wheat, rice and just let it flow to the sea. It would take decades of sacrifice to refill it,” the University of Colorado’s Glantz said.

“It’s like with climate change. No one wants to give up on fossil fuels or coal. And the same is with the Aral – no one wants to give up water. So who is going to make the sacrifice?” he asked. “It is hard to save something that’s not there.”

The US has revoked visas for the family of the PLO’s ambassador in Washington, DC, the latest measure against Palestinian officials by the Trump administration.

Ambassador Husam Zomlot said his family, including his two young children, had left the US after they were informed that their visas, which were due to expire in 2020 were no longer valid.

The move follows the US announcement last week to close diplomatic offices belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which will take effect next month. 

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO’s executive committee, condemned the decision to cancel visas for Zomlot’s family.

“As if the announcement that the US would close our office in Washington, DC was not enough, this vindictive action by the Trump administration is spiteful,” Ashrawi said in a statement.

Zomlot said in an interview that two of his embassy employees met last week with State Department staff, who had requested the meeting.

“The State Department informed our colleagues, as part of the discussion on the closure, that the visas of my wife and children are dependent on the PLO delegation and as such will not be valid after the closure of the office and that if they wanted to stay they would have to change their immigration status,” Zomlot said.

He added: “This goes against diplomatic norms. Children, spouses and family have nothing to do with political rows.”

‘Inhuman and immoral’

The move is the latest in a long line of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Palestinian officials and institutions.

In late August, the US cut all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides for the welfare and human development of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes by Israel during its founding, as well as their descendants.

The number of such refugees totals about five million people.

That same month the US cut $200m in economic aid to the Palestinians, which was being used for programmes in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip. 

Even hospitals were not spared from the measures, with the US deciding to scrap plans to provide $25m to a network of six hospitals in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority has called the withdrawal of aid “political blackmail” and an “inhuman and immoral action”.

The Trump administration justifies the measures by saying it wants to force the Palestinians to the negotiating table, but Palestinians believe the US is trying to strong arm them into accepting an unfavourable deal with the Israelis.

The US has always been Israel’s strongest ally, shielding the country diplomatically and supplying it with military aid.

The Trump administration, however, has taken on an even more aggressive stance against the Palestinians, which includes the decision to move the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.