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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Senate on Tuesday approved amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) empowering security agencies to detain suspects of terrorism and other serious crimes for up to three months, a move the government says will help fight militancy and address the country’s longstanding issue of enforced disappearances.

The Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2025, passed by the National Assembly last week, will now go to the president for assent before becoming law.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar defended the measure while speaking in parliament, saying it created a lawful framework for preventive detention that would strengthen counterterrorism operations.

“This will be a lawful process and there will be no enforced disappearances anymore,” Tarar told lawmakers, adding that the legislation was aimed at combating militancy and contained safeguards to prevent misuse.

Enforced disappearances have long been a contentious issue in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan, the site of a decades-old separatist insurgency and where families and rights groups accuse state institutions of arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings. Authorities deny the allegations but the practice has remained a source of domestic and international criticism.

By creating a legal mechanism for short-term preventive detention, the government says the new law will replace illegal practices and address concerns raised by families of missing persons.

The amended law comes as Pakistan grapples with twin insurgencies: religiously motivated groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who operate mainly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and ethno-nationalist Baloch separatists fighting against the state in southwestern Balochistan.

Pakistan became the world’s second-most affected by terrorist violence in 2024, with deaths rising 45 percent to 1,081, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2025.

WHAT THE LAW SAYS

The amendment allows the government, armed forces and civil armed forces to place terrorism suspects under preventive detention for up to 90 days, based on credible information or reasonable suspicion. Enforcement in provinces will require approval from respective governments, and detainees will have legal recourse through federal and provincial review boards made up of Supreme Court and high court judges.

The bill also gives legal cover to joint interrogation teams (JITs) comprising officials from multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with the aim of making operations more effective.

Opposition parties, including jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), strongly opposed the amendment in the Senate, warning that it could be misused against government critics.

“The amendment undermines constitutional freedoms,” PTI Senator Ali Zafar told Arab News, citing Articles 9, 10A and 19 of the Constitution, which guarantee security of person, fair trial and freedom of speech.

“While we must protect lives from terrorism, we also have to safeguard constitutional rights, without which Pakistan cannot be called a democracy,” Zafar said. “Counterterrorism does not mean counter-democracy. The law must be targeted, precise and just.”

Legal expert Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed said the effect of the new law would depend on whether it truly did away with the practice of enforced disappearances.

“If the amended law means that security and law enforcement agencies will now only detain people, then it could have a net positive effect,” he told Arab News.

“If, on the other hand, it merely means yet another legal method … while enforced disappearances continue unabated side by side, then obviously it will only be another tool of repression.”

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received China’s top diplomat on Tuesday, as the Asian powers resumed disputed border talks after years of tensions.

The neighbors and the world’s two most populous countries have been locked in a standoff triggered by deadly clashes along their Himalayan border, known as the Line of Actual Control, in 2020.

Tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery have since been deployed on both sides of the LAC, with both countries building new roads, bunkers, and airstrips in the high-altitude area.

Despite multiple rounds of military and diplomatic engagements, friction points remained, with India restricting Chinese investments, banning dozens of Chinese apps, and scrutinizing trade ties, as it deepened relations with Beijing’s rivals — the US, Japan, and Australia.

But a recent disruption caused earlier this month by US President Donald Trump’s trade war, in which he unexpectedly hiked the total duty on Indian exports to 50 percent, has created an opening for the Asian powers to seek to repair ties.

Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, arrived in New Delhi for a three-day visit on Monday. Ahead of meeting Modi, he held talks with his counterpart, S. Jaishankar, who told him in his welcome speech that after a “difficult period” in bilateral relations, the “two nations now seek to move ahead.”

Jaishankar said the visit would cover economic and trade issues, including cross-border trade, as well as people-to-people contacts.

Wang also met India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, for the 24th round of talks to discuss de-escalation of border tensions, and said he was ready to work with India “to build more consensus and identify the direction, the specific goals of the boundary consultations going forward, and create more conditions for the improvement and further growth” of bilateral relations.

A thaw between India and China began last year, when Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting in five years at a summit of BRICS nations in Russia’s Kazan.

They are expected to meet again later this month as Modi will visit China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This will be the Indian prime minister’s first official trip to China in over six years.

“Both are moving gradually to try and normalize a relationship. If you go back to October last year when Prime Minister Modi met President Xi Jinping, you saw the beginnings of some sort of an effort toward normalization,” Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Program and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, told Arab News.

But after years of freeze, the change was not likely to happen immediately.

Kewalramani expected that as the two countries resumed talks, they would be followed by more engagements at the levels of commerce, finance and industry and technology ministers.

“We can start to build on areas where there are commonalities and where are shared interests that would inject some sort of stability not only in the relationship but also in the geopolitics of the region,” he said.

“One can argue that the disruption that Donald Trump has caused has led to some degree of urgency, but I don’t think you’re going to see an overnight change in the relationship. I think what you are going to see is a slow, cautious, calibrated effort by both sides to try and arrive at some sort of a new equilibrium.”