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Islamabad: ​​​​​​​Pakistan is setting up deportation centers for migrants who are in the country illegally, including an estimated 1.7m Afghans, officials said Thursday. Anyone found staying in the country without authorization from next Wednesday will be arrested and sent to one of centers.

The move is the latest development in a Pakistani government crackdown to expel foreigners without registration or documents.

Jan Achakzai, a spokesman for the government in southwestern Pakistan's Baluchistan province, said three deportation centers were being set up there. One will be in Quetta, the provincial capital.

Azam Khan, the caretaker chief minister for northwest Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said the region also would have three deportation centers. More than 60,000 Afghans have returned home since the crackdown was announced, he said.

Migrants who are living in the country illegally should leave before a Tuesday deadline to avoid arrest, he said.

Pakistan's caretaker interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, says the deadline will not be extended.

Bugti said during a news conference Thursday that no migrants living in Pakistan without authorization illegally would be mistreated after their arrests. “They will not be manhandled,” he said, adding that they would get food and medical care until their deportations.

They are allowed to take a maximum of $180 out of the country, he said.

The minister warned Pakistanis that action would be taken against them if they are found to be sheltering migrants who are in the country illegally after Nov 1.

The government has information about the areas where these migrants are hiding, Bugti said. Deporting them is a challenge for the state, but “nothing is impossible to achieve it,” he added.

The country hosts millions of Afghans who fled their country during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. The numbers swelled after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in Aug 2021.

Pakistan says the 1.4m Afghans who are registered as refugees need not worry. It denies targeting Afghans and says the focus is on people who are in the country illegally, regardless of their nationality.

In the southwest Pakistani border town of Chaman, tens of thousands of people protested the crackdown and new plans requiring the town's residents to obtain a visa to cross the border into Afghanistan. They previously had special permits. The protesters included Afghans.

“We have relatives in Afghanistan. We also do business there; we have our shops there,” Allah Noor Achakzai, a 50-year old Pakistani, said

He said Afghans crossed the border into Pakistan everyday and returned home before the crossing closed, and that locals from both countries have gone back and forth on a daily basis for decades.

Last week, a group of former US diplomats and representatives of resettlement organizations urged Pakistan not to deport Afghans awaiting US visas under a program that relocates at-risk refugees fleeing Taliban rule.

The UN issued a similar appeal, saying the crackdown could lead to human rights violations, including the separation of families.

AP

Washington: Economic crises are rippling through the countries bordering Israel, raising the possibility of a chain reaction from the war with Hamas that further worsens the financial health and political stability of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon and creates problems well beyond.

Each of the three countries is up against differing economic pressures that led the International Monetary Fund to warn in a September report that they could lose their "sociopolitical stability." That warning came shortly before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7, triggering a war that could easily cause economic chaos that President Joe Biden and the European Union would likely need to address.

The possible fallout is now starting to be recognized by world leaders and policy analysts. For a Biden administration committed to stopping the Israel-Hamas war from widening, the conflict could amplify the economic strains and possibly cause governments to collapse. If the chaos went unchecked, it could spread across a region that is vital for global oil supplies—with reverberations around the globe.

“The more unstable things are economically, the easier it is for bad actors in the region to stir the pot," said Christopher Swift, an international lawyer and former Treasury Department official. "The notion that you can divorce politics from economics is a little bit myopic, and naive. Politics, economics and security go together very closely.”

World Bank head Ajay Banga warned at a conference in Saudi Arabia this week that the war puts economic development at a “dangerous juncture.”

The financial situation is serious enough that Charles Michel, president of the European Council, met with the IMF last Thursday and told officials there that they needed to do more to support the Egyptian government, which he said is under pressure due to the possibility of migrants arriving from Hamas-controlled Gaza as well as people fleeing a civil war in Sudan.

“Let’s support Egypt," Michel told reporters afterward. “Egypt needs our support and we need to support Egypt.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi refuses to take in Palestinian refugees, fearing that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. The Egyptian leader also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into the Sinai Peninsula.

Already, over a million people have been displaced within Gaza, and the threat of the war's escalation looms with clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border between the Israeli military and Hezbollah militants.

“To presume that there won’t be a movement of people is naïve and premature,” said Swift. “Any sudden blow to the el-Sissi regime from the outside, whether it’s an economic blow, or whether it’s the sudden migration of a lot of people out of Gaza into the Sinai could have destabilizing effects.”

Swift said that while el-Sissi’s regime is heavily dependent on US economic and military assistance, it's increasingly going to be popular opinion within Egypt that determines his actions, a lesson learned from the Arab Spring protests that brought down the Mubarak regime in 2011.

In April, the IMF concluded that Egypt's financing needs for the year were equal in size to 35 percent of its gross domestic product. On Oct 5, Moody’s downgraded Egyptian debt that was already at junk status. The downgrade came as past efforts have failed to help Egypt’s economy, which was saddled with about $160bn in debt as of the end of last year.

Mirette F. Mabrouk, director of the Middle East Institute’s Egypt Studies program, said, “Egypt is in the worst economic crisis I can remember in at least five decades” and that only complicates the current turmoil from the war.

“If you have this conflagration in Gaza, you need the rest of the region to be stable for everyone to take appropriate and correct action,” Mabrouk said. “You don’t need more instability in a region that is already quite unstable.”

Mabrouk said one of the most immediate signs of increasing distress is that Egypt’s central bank has in the past week imposed foreign currency restrictions on cards linked to local bank accounts.

One major potential setback for Egypt stemming from the latest Israel-Hamas War would be the loss of tourists seeking to explore the country's ancient pyramids and history. Tourism is one of Egypt's leading economic sectors, and along with foreign investment provides needed access to the rest of the global economy.

A representative from the Egyptian government did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Nearby Jordan is struggling due to slower economic growth and less foreign investment, according to the IMF. Its debt outlook is healthier than Egypt's, but its unemployment rate is in the double digits, according to financial data provider FactSet.

The size of the Lebanese economy shrank by more than half from 2019 to 2021, according to the World Bank. Lebanon's currency, which since 1997 had been pegged to the US dollar at 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar, now trades around 90,000 pounds to the dollar.

While many businesses have taken to charging in dollars, public employees who still get their wages in lira have seen their purchasing power crash, with many now relying on remittances from relatives abroad to stay afloat. International donors including the United States and Qatar have been subsidizing the salaries of Lebanese army soldiers.

The country’s leaders reached a tentative agreement with the IMF in April 2022 for a bailout package but they have not implemented most of the reforms required to finalize the deal. The IMF warned in a report earlier this year that without reforms, public debt in the small, crisis-ridden country could reach nearly 550 percent of GDP.

Before the latest Israel-Hamas war, some officials had pointed to Lebanon’s rebounding tourism industry as an economic lifeline. But since the conflict has threatened to envelop Lebanon—with regular small-scale clashes already taking place between militants from Hamas-allied Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the country’s southern border—foreign embassies have warned their citizens to leave and airlines have canceled flights to the country.

Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, said that “if tensions spread to the Gulf, this conflict will have the potential to severely impact international markets and struggling economies and populations around the globe.”

AP

Washington: In the midst of two active and potentially world-changing conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, the US is hoping to find at least a small measure of common ground with China as China’s top diplomat visits Washington this week.

Over three days of meetings that begin Thursday, top Biden administration officials, including possibly the president himself, will press Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the importance of China stepping up its role on the world stage if it wants to be considered a responsible major international player.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, are both expected to urge China to play a constructive role in both the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars. Those meetings could set the stage for a summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders gathering in San Francisco.

The US has been disappointed with China over its support for Russia in the war against Ukraine and its relative silence on the Middle East. In addition, the world's two largest economies are at odds on issues such as human rights, climate change, Taiwan, the South China Sea and North Korea.

Still, both sides have expressed a willingness to talk with each other since Blinken canceled a planned visit to China in February after the shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon over the U.S., which marked a low point in recent relations.

In the months that followed that crisis, however, Blinken rescheduled his trip and went to China in June. He was followed in quick succession by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, climate envoy John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

In addition, Sullivan met with Wang in Malta in mid-September ahead of Blinken's discussions with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng later that month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. And Blinken spoke just last week with Wang about the Israel-Hamas crisis.

The goal, according to U.S. officials, is to set the stage for another Biden-Xi summit at which the two leaders could explore cooperation or at least easing outright hostility on the most pressing matters of the day.

“Wang Yi’s visit will serve as one of the final touchpoints in laying the groundwork” for the Biden-Xi meeting, said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “Wang’s meetings in Washington will set the contours for the topics the two leaders will discuss when they meet in November.”

“It opens the possibility of the world’s two largest powers pursuing coordinated efforts to limit escalation or expansion of violence in Ukraine and the Middle East,” he said.

Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, another Washington think tank, said Wang's trip signals that the Xi-Biden summit is almost certain.

“Wang is here to pave the ground for Xi's San Francisco trip. That’s the core focus of the trip. It means issues will be negotiated, solutions will be discussed and details will be deliberated and inked,” Sun said. “The APEC summit is 20 days away, so time is of essence. His trip means that Xi is coming. Xi’s coming means meeting with Biden. The Xi-Biden summit means efforts to stabilize bilateral ties.”

Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Wang’s trip could yield results such as additional direct flights between the two countries, visas for more journalists and even agreements on climate change and resumption of high-level military dialogue.

But while it is important for Wang and the Americans to discuss points of contention in the Indo-Pacific region and elsewhere, Kennedy said it is unlikely the two sides will reach much agreement.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wang will “have in-depth exchanges of views” with US officials on a range of issues and “state China’s principled position and legitimate concerns” on relations between the two countries.

The Chinese president last came to the US in 2017, when former President Donald Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden, who took office in 2021, has yet to host Xi on US soil. The two men last met in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting of leading rich and developing nations.

Wang's trip is one of a string of meetings and activities to warm up Xi's visit to the US.

California Gov Gavin Newsom, who is visiting China this week, had a surprise meeting with Xi on Wednesday in Beijing. The Chinese president told the governor that “the achievements of China-US relations have not come easily and should be cherished all the more,” according to the official news agency Xinhua.

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer led a delegation of six senators to China, in the first visit by US lawmakers since 2019. Schumer was also received by Xi, who said the Thucydides Trap is “not inevitable.” The Thucydides Trap is a political term for the tendency of major clashes when an emerging power challenges an existing power.

The US-China relationship began to sour in 2018 when the Trump administration slapped hefty tariffs on $50bn worth of Chinese goods. It deteriorated further over a range of issues, including rights abuses, the South China Sea, Taiwan, technology and the Covid-19 pandemic.

AP

Beijing: Breaking its silence on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday said Beijing hoped that the issue would be resolved in a "just and lasting manner" on the basis of the "two-state solution."

Addressing a press briefing in the Chinese capital, Beijing, on Tuesday, Mao said, "We sincerely hope that the Palestinian question will be resolved in a comprehensive, just and lasting manner on the basis of the two-state solution. On the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, our position is highly consistent with that of the Arab states."

Condemning the atrocities on civilians on both sides, she said her country was opposed to any violation of international law.

Stressing the need to protect civilians amid the ongoing conflict, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza was critical to preventing an ever-worsening humanitarian disaster.

"We all hope that the fighting will stop as soon as possible in order to prevent the situation from escalating or even spiraling out of control. We oppose acts that harm civilians and oppose any violation of international law and call for protecting civilians and providing humanitarian aid to prevent an even worse humanitarian disaster," Mao said at the briefing.

Coming out in support of a two-state solution, she said, we support the "realization of Palestinian people's right to statehood and survival and their right of return, which we believe is the only viable way out of the Palestinian question".

She also called for a "more authoritative, influential and broad-based international peace conference to be held as soon as possible, an early resumption of peace talks and formulation of a timetable and roadmap to that end".

The spokesperson added that since the beginning of the "Israel-Palestine conflict", China has maintained close communication with relevant parties, "actively participated in the consultations at the UN Security Council, and has made every effort to promote peace talks and help de-escalate the situation".

"The international community, especially the many Arab countries, commends China's just position and the role it has played as a responsible major country," she added.

She stated that China will firmly support all efforts that are "conducive to dialogue, ceasefire and peace and will do its best on everything conducive to the implementation of the two-state solution and a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian question".

China was ready to work together with the international community to "make relentless efforts to that end", she added. 

ANI