PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s National Institute of Health (NIH) reported two new cases of the poliovirus on Monday, taking the total number of cases of the disease reported this year to 25 as Islamabad struggles to stem its spread of the infection.
Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. Experts say the only effective protection is through repeated doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) for every child under the age of five, alongside timely completion of all routine immunizations.
The two new cases were reported from Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, in a 21-month-old girl from Badin district, and in a 72-month-old girl from district Kohistan in northwestern Pakistan.
“With these detections, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan in 2025 has reached 21–including 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, six from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan,” Pakistan’s polio program said in a statement.
The program said continued detection of polio cases shows that children remain at risk in areas with low vaccine acceptance. It said a Sub-National Polio Vaccination Campaign will take place from Sept. 1-7, targeting more than 28 million children under the age of five, in 99 districts across all provinces and regions.
He said the campaign in southern KP will be conducted from Sept. 15, adding that the goal was to ensure every child in these districts receives the vaccine to protect them from polio.
“Parents and caregivers are strongly urged to ensure their children receive the polio vaccine during this and every campaign,” the statement said.
Over the past year, the polio program has conducted six high-quality vaccination campaigns, four of them nationwide, each reaching over 45 million children.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic.
Islamabad made significant progress in curbing the virus, with annual cases dropping from around 20,000 in the early 1990s to just eight in 2018. Pakistan reported six cases in 2023 and only one in 2021 but the country saw an intense resurgence of the poliovirus in 2024, with 74 cases reported.
Efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, who claim immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage. Militant groups have frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, particularly in KP and Balochistan.
KHAPLU, Pakistan: Gunmen attacked a security check post in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region overnight, killing two paramilitary officials and injuring two others, police said on Friday.
The violence is the latest in an area where Chinese workers are helping to build a multibillion-dollar dam.
The attackers struck between midnight and 1 a.m. in the Hudor area of Chilas, targeting personnel of the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) Scouts, a paramilitary force that also provides protection to Chinese engineers and officials at the nearby Diamer-Bhasha Dam site.
“Miscreant elements attacked a security check post of GB Scouts in Hudor area of Chilas. Two security officials were killed and one was injured in the attack,” Abdul Hameed, the district police officer (DPO), told Arab News.
“The attack was carried out between 12 to 1 am. No organization has claimed responsibility so far.”
The GB Scouts shifted the bodies and wounded to a local hospital, Hameed said, adding that a search operation was underway to track the perpetrators.
The Hudor area has witnessed repeated violence. In December 2023, gunmen opened fire on a passenger bus traveling through the Diamer district, killing at least nine people.
Authorities at the time blamed militant elements operating in the mountainous region, which borders Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Militant groups have sporadically targeted security forces, infrastructure projects, and civilians in Gilgit-Baltistan, though attacks remain less frequent than in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt or southwestern Balochistan.
The GB region is home to the strategic China-backed Diamer-Bhasha Dam, part of Pakistan’s efforts to expand hydropower and water storage capacity.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for Friday’s assault.
ISLAMABAD: As record monsoon floods batter Pakistan’s Punjab province, officials are calling for urgent investment in dams and water infrastructure, arguing that India’s stronger flood defenses have limited damage on its side while Pakistan reels from rising death tolls and mass displacement.
This week, swollen rivers in Pakistan’s Punjab have submerged more than 1,600 villages, displaced over 1.1 million people and pushed nationwide fatalities since June, when the monsoon season began, past 820. The mass evacuations began after heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and the release of water from overflowing dams in India triggered flash floods in low-lying border regions in Pakistan.
Experts say Pakistan’s meager storage capacity leaves it acutely vulnerable to both floods and droughts, a risk compounded by climate change, which is making the monsoons more erratic and intense each year.
By contrast, India has invested far more heavily in dams and reservoirs, giving it a significantly larger buffer against floods and droughts, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Thursday during a briefing to the prime minister in flood-hit Narowal district.
“We must identify those gaps in our infrastructure,” He said. “If you look at the River Ravi, India has made very strong spurs, embankments and dams on its side that they throw all the water at us as per their will.”
PM Shehbaz Sharif also called for urgent construction of reservoirs and dams as swollen rivers devastated the breadbasket province of Punjab.
“We have to build the capacity for water storage. If there is storage, there will be a shortage of flash floods. Cascading will also be controlled,” the premier said in televised comments.
“This is the work that we must start today.”
According to the Indian Central Water Commission, India has a live water storage capacity of about 257.8 billion cubic meters (BCM), or around 209 million acre-feet, enough to hold water for 124 days. Pakistan’s total storage capacity is just 14 million acre-feet, which experts say is sufficient for only 30 days.
While rains and floods have killed nearly 820 people in Pakistan since June, over 1,200 have died in India nationwide, which has a population over five times larger than Pakistan.
Iqbal said climate change was the “new normal” but not unmanageable if systemic weaknesses were addressed, arguing that India suffered less damage from this season’s floods while Pakistan was overwhelmed.
India, as the upstream country in the Indus Basin — a river system governed by a 1960 treaty between the two nations — can regulate flows to Pakistan through infrastructure such as the Ranjit Sagar (Thein) Dam on the Ravi, the Ferozepur Headworks barrage on the Sutlej, the Baglihar and Salal dams on the Chenab, and the Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project on the Jhelum.
These projects — located in Indian Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir — are used to store water, generate electricity, and control seasonal river flows, giving India leverage over the timing and volume of water entering Pakistan.
But experts note that India’s water storage picture is not without its own challenges.
Despite ranking third globally in the number of large dams built, India’s combined live storage capacity is considered inadequate to fully meet its water security needs. Insufficient infrastructure limits its ability to hold back and store water under the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, constraining both domestic use and strategic flexibility.
Indeed, as Pakistan’s Punjab reeled under a flood emergency, in neighboring Indian-administered Kashmir’s Jammu region too, some of the heaviest rains in decades for the month of August have also wrought havoc, triggering flash floods and landslides.
Homes have been submerged and roads and bridges damaged, forcing Indian authorities to evacuate thousands of people living in flooded areas. At least 115 people have been killed in Jammu and scores injured just in August.
In Pakistan, it is also the first time in 38 years that the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers have been in high flood simultaneously, forcing rescue workers to intensify operations across multiple districts, according to the provincial irrigation department.
POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL BURDENS
Experts say Pakistan’s weak infrastructure is less about technical capacity and more about political and financial constraints.
“Pakistan has lagged behind India in building dams and water infrastructure largely due to fragmented governance, insufficient and inconsistent funding, political opposition and over-reliance on international financing,” Ahmed Kamal, former chief engineering adviser and chairman of the Federal Flood Commission, told Arab News.
He said such factors undermined “cohesive long-term planning and execution,” with inter-provincial disputes stalling major projects.
For example, the long-proposed Kalabagh Dam on the Indus River has faced decades of opposition from Sindh province, where politicians and farmers fear it would give Punjab greater control over water flows and reduce supplies to downstream communities. The controversy has made Kalabagh one of Pakistan’s most divisive infrastructure projects, effectively blocking progress on what engineers argue could have added badly needed storage capacity.
“After Mangla and Tarbela [dams], Pakistan paused dam building for 40 years before starting the Mohmand and Diamer-Bhasha projects,” Kamal said.
The Mangla Dam, built in the 1960s, and Tarbela, completed in the 1970s, remain Pakistan’s largest reservoirs and hydroelectric projects, critical to irrigation and power generation. By contrast, Mohmand is a smaller dam now under construction in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while Diamer-Bhasha, planned in Gilgit-Baltistan, is a vast project envisioned as one of the world’s tallest concrete dams but repeatedly delayed by financing and political disputes.
Many experts suggest building smaller water-retention structures — such as check dams and delay-action dams, which slow down floodwaters to recharge groundwater — along with rainwater harvesting and conservation practices.
A deeper challenge also lies in governance, with political instability and frequent leadership changes undermining consistent long-term planning.
Dr. Rashid Aftab, director at Islamabad’s Riphah Institute of Public Policy, said India’s relative political stability had allowed consistent long-term planning, while Pakistan’s frequent leadership changes had produced short-term approaches.
“On one hand, they [India] naturally enjoy the advantage of being upstream in the Indus Basin, and on the other, they pursue policies with strong political will and greater fiscal space to invest in water infrastructure,” Aftab said.
Because India sits upstream of Pakistan on the Indus river system, it can regulate water flows before they cross the border — an asymmetry that has shaped decades of tensions between the two countries.
Aftab noted that India had invested not only in large dams but also in groundwater recharge through rainwater harvesting and extensive canal networks.
Pakistan, by contrast, has relied on external loans and has limited fiscal space to fund its own projects.
“Currently, Pakistan’s total water storage capacity is only around 14 million acre-feet, enough to last just 30 days,” Aftab said, urging Islamabad to accelerate large dam construction while also expanding small and medium reservoirs, check dams, and water conservation projects.
ISLAMABAD: Authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Friday ordered fresh evacuations as major flood surges coursed down the Ravi and Chenab rivers, threatening towns in the districts of Jhang and Chiniot after weeks of heavy monsoon rains.
The flooding, fueled by record monsoon rains and excess water released from upstream India, has created crisis conditions in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and richest province and home to half the population of 240 million. Authorities have issued evacuation orders around the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers, where record flows have been recorded at barrage points.
Punjab’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has said more than 1,600 villages have already been submerged this week, with 17 people killed in the province and over 1.1 million people evacuated from vulnerable areas. Nationwide, Pakistan’s monsoon death toll has climbed past 820 since the season began in June, with rescue agencies struggling to cope with mass displacement across multiple provinces. The army has been called in for relief and rescue operations.
A PDMA briefing on Friday warned that a surge of 217,000 cusecs was moving down the Ravi River, while a large flood wave in the Chenab was heading toward Jhang. Evacuation orders were issued for the riverine belts of Nankana, Sheikhupura, and Toba Tek Singh, while authorities decided to breach a bridge at Rozwah to divert waters and protect the downstream cities of Jhang and Chiniot.
The combined population off Jhang and Chiniot districts is about 4.63 million people.
“We are establishing tent villages in affected areas and ensuring the provision of basic and medical facilities,” Punjab Chief Secretary Zahid Akhtar Zaman told officials during a high-level meeting according to a statement from his office.
He said mobile health units known as “Clinics on Wheels” had been dispatched to flood-hit districts and medical camps stocked with essential drugs, including anti-snakebite vaccines.
Officials also considered closing schools in affected areas for a week, while the livestock department was directed to supply feed and vaccines for animals.
“All relief and rescue demands are being met on the instructions of the chief minister,” Zaman said.
The PDMA forecast heavy rain in the coming days across much of Punjab, including Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Bahawalpur, warning that river flows could rise further as the ninth spell of the monsoon sweeps through the province.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s cabinet has approved a deal to transfer the operations of Islamabad International Airport to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the government said on Thursday, in a move aimed at attracting foreign capital and improving the country’s struggling aviation sector.
The agreement, to be concluded under a government-to-government (G2G) model, comes as Pakistan seeks to privatize or outsource management of several state-run enterprises under conditions agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a $7 billion bailout approved in September last year.
The national flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), and state-owned electricity generation and distribution companies, are already on the government’s privatization list, while authorities have been looking for international partners to modernize airports and improve services.
Officials hope foreign partners will bring operational expertise, enhance passenger experience, and restore confidence in the aviation sector.
“Today [Aug. 28] we decided to finalize arrangements with the UAE government through a G2G framework agreement for the transfer of operations of Islamabad International Airport,” Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a statement after chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Inter-Governmental Commercial Transactions.
The Negotiation Committee formed to work out details will be headed by the prime minister’s adviser on privatization and will include representatives from the ministries of defense, finance, law and justice, and privatization, according to the statement.
Islamabad International Airport, inaugurated in 2018 at a cost of over $1 billion, has faced criticism over construction delays, poor facilities, and operational inefficiencies. The airport was built to replace the old Benazir Bhutto International Airport, which had been overwhelmed by passenger traffic.
The handover is part of a broader government drive to secure foreign investment in critical infrastructure. Earlier this year, the government said it was considering offering management contracts for airports in Karachi and Lahore as well, though no final arrangements have been announced.
Pakistan’s aviation sector has been under strain since the 2020 European Union ban on PIA flights following a pilot licensing scandal, while the Civil Aviation Authority has struggled with safety oversight and revenue shortfalls.
Rawalpindi, PAKISTAN: Pawan Raj stepped through thick, untamed bushes into an unmarked, whitewashed structure and slipped off her shoes at the entrance. Inside, a worn carpet covered broken cement and chapped walls told a story of decades of neglect.
This is the Maharishi Valmiki Swamiji Mandir, built in 1935 in Rawalpindi’s Gracy Lines neighborhood and one of two Hindu temples in the garrison city. The city’s Hindu families still gather here, grateful the religious sanctuary has endured through decades of upheaval, migration, and abandonment.
“I consider myself lucky,” Pawan, 36, told Arab News, arranging incense sticks before the idol of the revered Hindu sage, Maharishi Guru Valmiki Bhagwan.
“My Hindu friends in neighboring Islamabad aren’t so fortunate. They have no temple of their own.”
Indeed, Islamabad has no functional Hindu temple, which means many of the capital city’s residents travel to neighboring Rawalpindi to worship at the Valmiki Mandir.
“We do not have a temple in Islamabad,” confirmed Pandit Rakhesh Chand, chairman of the Pakistan Sanatan Dharam, a welfare council representing Hindus in the capital.
“So, the Hindus of Islamabad are facing a lot of difficulty ... they have to go to Rawalpindi.”
In Islamabad’s Saidpur Village, a centuries-old shrine to the Hindu god Ram still stands, but worship has not been allowed there since 1947. Visitors can tour the site, its idols long removed, and the shrine is now largely absorbed into a tourist strip of restaurants and handicraft stores.
Before Partition in 1947, Hindus and Sikhs formed a large share of Rawalpindi’s population, with several temples serving the community.
“We had two to three mandirs [temples] in the cantonment area,” recalled Budh Raj, 76, the custodian of the Maharishi Valmiki Swamiji Mandir in Rawalpindi. “After the Hindu population migrated, the temples were left vacant.”
Budh added that the land originally allocated for the Mandir had been reduced over time due to encroachments.
“In 1935, our temple was built. Our elders worked on this temple, there was a lot of space for the temple,” Raj said.
“Wherever you see, temples always have a lot of space, but all the space has been taken over by our people, those who have [encroached]. Whatever they gave us, that is all we have left [for the temple],” he lamented.
STALLED PROMISE
In 2020, then–prime minister Imran Khan approved Rs100 million ($354,377) for Islamabad’s first Hindu temple, the Shri Krishna Temple. Soon after, Lahore’s Jamia Ashrafia seminary issued a decree calling the construction a “non-permissible act.”
The matter went to Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises the government on the compatibility of laws and directives with Islamic injuctions. The Council approved construction but recommended that the government not spend public funds directly on a private place of worship.
Four years on, the designated plot remains vacant.
Kheal Das Kohistani, Pakistan’s state minister for religious affairs, said the government financed renovations of existing places of worship but not new construction.
“There is a specific amount for the old ones, historical ones,” he clarified. “The government of Pakistan does not build a new mandir anywhere.”
Kohistani acknowledged the difficulties Hindus faced in Islamabad and pledged to raise the stalled project with the interior ministry and the Capital Development Authority.
Back at the Valmiki Mandir, Pawan Raj said a temple in the capital would spare families long trips for routine prayers and rites of passage.
“People in Islamabad face a lot of difficulties,” she said. “I want there to be a temple there.”
