World Culture Mosaic

Mumbai (AFP) – Indian filmmakers are locking up the rights to movie titles that can profit from the patriotism fanned by a four-day conflict with Pakistan, which killed more than 70 people.

The nuclear-armed rivals exchanged artillery, drone and air strikes in May, after India blamed Pakistan for an armed attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The fighting came to an end when US President Donald Trump announced a surprise ceasefire.

Now, some Bollywood filmmakers see an opportunity to cash in on the battle.

India tagged its military action against Pakistan "Operation Sindoor", the Hindi word for vermilion, which married Hindu women wear on their foreheads.

The name was seen as a symbol of Delhi's determination to avenge those widowed in the April 22 attack in Kashmir's Pahalgam, which sparked the hostilities.

Film studios have registered a slew of titles evoking the operation, including: "Mission Sindoor", "Sindoor: The Revenge", "The Pahalgam Terror", and "Sindoor Operation".

"It's a story which needs to be told," said director Vivek Agnihotri.

"If it was Hollywood, they would have made 10 films on this subject. People want to know what happened behind the scenes," he told AFP.

Agnihotri struck box office success with his 2022 release, "The Kashmir Files", based on the mass flight of Hindus from Kashmir in the 1990s.

The ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party gave that film a glowing endorsement, despite accusations that it aimed to stir up hatred against India's minority Muslims.

Since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014, some critics say Bollywood is increasingly promoting his government's ideology.

Raja Sen, a film critic and screenwriter, said filmmakers felt emboldened by an amenable government.

"We tried to wage a war and then we quietened down when Mr Trump asked us to. So what is the valour here?" Sen told AFP of the Pakistan clashes.

Anil Sharma, known for directing rabble-rousing movies, criticised the apparent rush to make films related to the Pahalgam attack.

"This is herd mentality... these are seasonal filmmakers, they have their constraints," he said.

"I don't wait for an incident to happen and then make a film based on that. A subject should evoke feelings and only then cinema happens," said Sharma.

Sharma's historical action flick "Gadar: Ek Prem Katha" (2001) and its sequel "Gadar 2" (2023), both featuring Sunny Deol in lead roles, were big hits.

In Bollywood, filmmakers often seek to time releases for national holidays like Independence Day, which are associated with heightened patriotic fervour.

"Fighter", featuring big stars Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone, was released on the eve of India's Republic Day on January 25 last year.

Though not a factual retelling, it drew heavily from India's 2019 airstrike on Pakistan's Balakot.

The film received mixed-to-positive reviews but raked in $28 million in India, making it the fourth highest-grossing Hindi film of that year.

This year, "Chhaava", a drama based on the life of Sambhaji Maharaj, a ruler of the Maratha Empire, became the highest-grossing film so far this year.

It also generated significant criticism for fuelling anti-Muslim bias.

"This is at a time when cinema is aggressively painting Muslim kings and leaders in violent light," said Sen.

"This is where those who are telling the stories need to be responsible about which stories they choose to tell."

Sen said filmmakers were reluctant to choose topics that are "against the establishment".

"If the public is flooded with dozens of films that are all trying to serve an agenda, without the other side allowed to make itself heard, then that propaganda and misinformation enters the public psyche," he said.

Acclaimed director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra said true patriotism is promoting peace and harmony through the medium of cinema.

Mehra's socio-political drama "Rang De Basanti" (2006) won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film and was chosen as India's official entry for the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

"How we can arrive at peace and build a better society? How we can learn to love our neighbours?" he asked.

"For me that is patriotism."

Indigenous communities in northern Kenya are being pushed off their land to make way for wildlife reserves, human rights groups say. They accuse conservation groups of using tourism and carbon offset schemes to justify evictions and violence.

The savannahs of Isiolo County are home to elephants, giraffes, zebras and lions, attracting thousands of tourists each year.

The region is also used for carbon offset projects, where companies like Netflix and Meta pay to fund conservation efforts that help cancel out their own emissions.

The wildlife reserves are managed by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a network of around 43 to 45 community conservancies across northern and coastal Kenya. NRT says it supports local institutions that are led by and serve indigenous communities.

But in a report published this week, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Lawyers Without Borders (ASF) accuse NRT of violating the rights of the Borana, Samburu and Rendille peoples.

“Local communities are being restricted from accessing their own lands," FIDH's Gaëlle Dusepulchre told RFI.

"The areas are then protected by rangers and police. When communities protest or attempt to access the land, they are often met with repression. Cases of violence committed by both rangers and local police, as well as local government officials, have been documented."

NRT, which was created in 2004, sells carbon credits to Western companies including Meta, Netflix, British Airways and other multinationals.

The Coalition for Human Rights in Development says NRT has received millions of dollars from international donors, including the European Union, USAID, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Bank and the French Development Agency.

The new report adds to earlier claims of abuse and misconduct.

In November 2021, the US-based Oakland Institute accused NRT of links to community violence and extrajudicial killings.

The report said NRT, working with the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) and local authorities, “dispossessed pastoralist communities of their ancestral lands, through corruption, cooptation, and sometimes through intimidation and violence, to create wildlife conservancies for conservation dollars”.

The following year, donors commissioned an independent review to look into the allegations. Kanyinke Sena, director of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee, said he found “strikingly little evidence" to back the claims.

The Oakland Institute rejected the review, calling it a “sham”. It said Sena failed to meet tribal leaders or find the families of those allegedly harmed, Mongabay News reported.

The environmental media outlet also reported that protests against NRT by indigenous groups were often put down by force. On 8 May 2023, police in Kenya reportedly fired live ammunition and tear gas at unarmed villagers who were protesting the opening of a new NRT office and a conservation project launched without their consent.

Earlier this year, a court sided with indigenous communities and ruled that two of NRT’s largest conservancies had been created illegally.

The case was brought by 165 people from local communities.

The court also ordered NRT rangers to leave both areas. The rangers have been accused of serious human rights abuses.

One of the conservancies involved, Biligo Bulesa, provides about one fifth of the carbon credits in NRT’s offset programme, said Survival International.

Despite the court win, Dusepulchre said indigenous groups still struggle to access justice. “Some of them have lodged complaints. They haven't been processed, nor have they led to investigations. So there is indeed a broader issue around access to justice,” she said.

FIDH is calling on NRT, Kenyan authorities and international donors to respect the rights of local people. “Nature conservation must not happen without the participation of those who live on these lands,” Dusepulchre said.

The Northern Rangelands Trust has not yet responded to RFI’s requests for comment.

Herat (Afghanistan) (AFP) – When Mohammad Hanif heard Qatar was opening jobs to Afghans, he joined thousands of others to put his name down for a shot to make a living in the gas-rich emirate, his own country wracked by unemployment.

The Taliban authorities announced a deal with Gulf state this month to recruit 3,100 workers from Afghanistan, who started applying on Tuesday at centres across the country.

By Wednesday, more than 8,500 people had put their names down from the capital Kabul and surrounding provinces, labour ministry spokesman Samiullah Ibrahimi told AFP, and more than 15,500 people are expected to register nationwide.

The Taliban government says the jobs will help fight steep unemployment and poverty in the country of around 48 million people, facing what the United Nations says is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"Our country has many problems, most people are poor and work odd jobs," said Hanif, who travelled to western Herat from neighbouring Badghis to register.

"I have skills in car mechanics and cooking, and I have certificates to prove it," said the 35-year-old, adding he was grateful to Qatar for employing Afghans.

Competition is steep, however, with centres swarmed by hopeful applicants ready to present the required passports, identification cards and professional certificates to nab roles ranging from bus driver to cleaner, cook, mechanic and electrician.

More than 1,000 people have applied in southern Kandahar for around 375 positions allocated to the region, and in Herat, around 2,000 people lined up on Wednesday to try for one of a few hundred jobs, AFP journalists said.

Qatar, where the Taliban opened an office during the two-decade war with US-led forces, is one of the handful of countries to have strong diplomatic ties with Afghanistan's rulers after they swept to power in 2021. Only Russia has so far officially recognised the Taliban government.

Discussions are also underway with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey and Russia to set up similar deals, labour minister Abdul Manan Omari said in a statement on Tuesday.

The process "will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the country's economic situation and reduce unemployment", said Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs.

Nearly half of Afghanistan's population lives in poverty, and the unemployment rate (over 13 percent) affects nearly a quarter of young people aged 15 to 29, according to the World Bank. Those who do have work often support large, extended families on stretched salaries.

High unemployment has been driven by infrastructure hamstrung by 40 years of conflict, drought impacting the crucial agriculture sector and the recent mass removals of Afghans from neighbouring countries, said Noorullah Fadwi, head of an association of job search companies.

This year, nearly two million Afghans have returned to their country after being driven out or deported from Iran and Pakistan, where many had lived for decades.

"We are grateful to Qatar and ask other (Arab) countries to hire Afghan workers too, because the situation in Iran and Pakistan is very bad," said 39-year-old Noor Mohammad, who registered in Herat, hoping for a hotel job.

The Taliban authorities have not yet detailed how the Afghan recruits will be housed or their potential working conditions, while pledging to safeguard their rights.

Qatar, where foreigners make up nearly 90 percent of the three million-strong population, has faced heavy criticism over the treatment of migrant labourers, particularly during construction leading up to hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Qatar has since introduced major reforms to improve workers' safety and punish employers who violate the rules.

It has dismantled its "kafala" labour system, which gave employers powerful rights over whether workers could leave their jobs or even the country.

Mohammad Qasim, 37, said he would not go to Qatar if he could find a job in Afghanistan, but he earned a university degree in education four years ago and has been unemployed ever since.

"I tried very hard to find work but there is nothing," he told AFP, saying he applied to be a cleaner at a centre in Kandahar.

At least in Qatar, he said, "I will earn something."

Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – For over a month, Alberto has hardly dared to leave the small room he rents in someone's backyard for fear of encountering the masked police who have been rounding up immigrants in Los Angeles.

"It's terrible," sighed the 60-year-old Salvadoran, who does not have a US visa.

"It's a confinement I wouldn't wish upon anyone."

To survive, Alberto -- AFP agreed to use a pseudonym -- relies on an organization that delivers food to him twice a week.

"It helps me a lot, because if I don't have this... how will I eat?" said Alberto, who has not been to his job at a car wash for weeks.

The sudden intensification of immigration enforcement activity in Los Angeles in early June saw scores of people -- mostly Latinos -- arrested at car washes, hardware stores, on farms and even in the street.

Videos circulating on social media showed masked and heavily armed men pouncing on people who they claimed were hardened criminals.

However, critics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps say those snatched were only trying to earn a meagre wage in jobs that many Americans don't want to do.

The raids -- slammed as brutal and seemingly arbitrary -- sparked a wave of demonstrations that gripped the city for weeks, including some that spiraled into violence and vandalism.

Alberto decided to hole up in his room after one such raid on a car wash in which some of his friends were arrested, and subsequently deported.

Despite being pre-diabetic, he is hesitant to attend an upcoming medical appointment. His only breath of fresh air is pacing the private alley in front of his home.

"I'm very stressed. I have headaches and body pain because I was used to working," he said.

In 15 years in the United States, Trump's second term has turned out to be "worse than anything" for him.

Trump's immigration offensive was a major feature of his re-election campaign, even winning the favor of some voters in liberal Los Angeles.

But its ferocity, in a place that is home to hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, has taken the city by surprise.

Faced with mounting raids, migrants are limiting their movement as much as possible.

In June, the use of the public transportation system -- a key network for the city's poorer residents -- dropped by 13.5 percent compared to the previous month.

"As you're driving through certain neighborhoods, it looks like a ghost town sometimes," said Norma Fajardo, from the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, a non-profit organization that supports these workers.

It has joined forces with other groups to deliver hundreds of bags of food every week to those afraid to step outside.

"There is a huge need for this," said the 37-year-old American.

"It's very saddening and infuriating. Workers should be able to go to work and not fear getting kidnapped."

In June, ICE agents arrested over 2,200 people in the Los Angeles area, according to internal documents analyzed by AFP.

About 60 percent of them had no criminal record.

Given the colossal resources recently allocated to ICE by Congress -- nearly $30 billion to bolster immigration enforcement, including funding to recruit 10,000 additional agents -- Fajardo says she is not expecting any let up.

"It seems like this is the new normal," she sighed.

"When we first heard of an ICE raid at a car wash, we were in emergency crisis mode. Now we are just really accepting that we need to plan for the long term."

Food assistance has also become essential for Marisol, a Honduran woman who has been confined to her building for weeks with 12 family members.

"We constantly thank God (for the food deliveries) because this has been a huge relief," says the 62-year-old Catholic, who has not attended Mass in weeks.

Marisol -- not her real name -- has hung up curtains on the windows at her home entrance to block any view from outside.

She forbids her grandchildren from opening the door and worries enormously when her daughters venture out to work a few hours to provide for the family's needs.

"Every time they go out, I pray to God that they come back, because you never know what might happen," she said.

Marisol and her family fled a Honduran crime gang 15 years ago because they wanted to forcibly recruit her children.

Now, some of them wonder if it's worth continuing to live in the United States.

"My sons have already said to me: 'Mom, sometimes I would prefer to go to Europe.'"

Antalya (Turkey) (AFP) – Thousands of carpets and kilim rugs spread out in the sun form a festive and kaleidoscopic patchwork on the outskirts of Antalya, a coastal tourist city in southern Turkey.

From June to September, in harvested fields cleared of stubble, merchants bring their cargo to age in the sun, tempering the bright hues of their natural colours and ridding them of undesirable elements.

Hasan Topkara washed wool knotted carpets and rugs that come from across Turkey. He dries them, trims their fringes and stray strands if necessary, then spreads them out in the sunlight for three months, on the bare ground.

The wool, coloured with natural vegetable dyes, takes on pastel tones and softens between the morning dew and the heat of the day.

According to Topkara, in the past, up to 60,000 carpets were processed in each three month drying season in the Dosemealti district.

But today he is one of the last ones to do so, with around 15,000 carpets stored side by side on a 40-hectare (100 acre) area.

Around 50 workers watch them day and night, turning them regularly and monitoring the weather. About 100 people rush in from the surrounding villages to help fold the carpets if there is rain.

In 45 minutes, everything must be put away in a sheltered place, then brought out again once the rain has stopped.

Once they have reached the desired shade, most of the carpets are sent to Istanbul and its historic Grand Bazaar, from where they are frequently shipped abroad.

Over the years, Topkara's field of colours has become a tourist attraction, especially after Turkish pop singer Mabel Matiz recorded a video clip for his song "Sarmasik" there in 2018.

Toronto (Canada) (AFP) – The spur to build Toronto's billion-dollar-plus flood prevention project dates back to a devastating hurricane in 1954, but planners say its urgency was reinforced by the recent tragic flooding in Texas.

The Port Lands project has, in part, reversed a consequence of industrialization by reconnecting Lake Ontario with the Don River, more than a century after they were severed to create an industrial area.

Chris Glaisek, chief planning officer at the municipal body Waterfront Toronto, said the idea was to "heal the land from the way it was repurposed 100 years ago," with a focus on "flood protection and naturalization."

The complex project -- one of the largest in Toronto's history with a cost of Can$1.4 billion (US$1 billion) -- included digging a river valley and the creation of two new river outlets, with wetlands and marshes to absorb excess water during extreme storms.

The mouth of the Don River was once the Great Lakes system's largest fresh water marsh, a rich habitat and vital food resource for Indigenous people before colonization.

But Toronto, like many North American cities, saw industrial growth in the late 19th Century.

Much of the marsh was drained and filled in to make room for a port industrial area, while the river was re-routed into a man-made channel.

The Port Lands never thrived as an industrial area, leaving a vast stretch of eastern downtown under-used, and the Don River became polluted.

"It was really dirty, it was foul, it was terrible," Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said recently.

On October 15, 1954 Hurricane Hazel hit Toronto, after hammering parts of the Caribbean and eastern United States.

It killed 81 people across the Greater Toronto Area and served as catalyst for the city to get serious about flood protection.

Hazel flooded the Humber River, in western Toronto, but Glaisek said "it was understood at the time that that same amount of rainfall, had it landed on the (eastern) Don, would have done a comparable amount of damage."

He called Hazel an initial "impetus" to re-naturalize the Port Lands, but rising awareness over the past two decades about the causal link between climate change and extreme floods helped advance the project.

To reclaim the Port Lands, Toronto partnered with the US-based landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which has worked on the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Laura Solano, the lead designer, said the project was "duty bound to address catastrophic flooding," but stressed it offered "much more."

Because the area has been reformed to cope with flood waters, parts have been declared safe for new housing -- an urgent need in the expensive metropolis.

There is also a new park, trails and people can canoe or kayak through the rehabilitated Don.

Solano stressed Toronto's initial decision to alter the area was consistent with the times, when North American cities moved to "industrialize their waters...to raise their economic position."

But now, "every city is looking to reclaim their waters," she told AFP.

The Port Lands "shows the world that it's possible to fix the past and turn deficit and remnant industrial lands into living and breathing infrastructure."

As Glaisek described the project, he stood on a bank that would, by design, be under water during a major storm.

"It's all planned so that it can flood, the water level can rise, the river can get about three, maybe four times wider than it is now, absorb all of that volume of water," he said.

"When the storm event subsides, it will shrink back down to this."

It's a planning approach that recognizes "we're seeing more and more of these events."

"Like in Texas, you see very tragic outcomes when you haven't really tried to plan for nature," he told AFP, referring to flash floods in early July that killed at least 135 people.

He urged planners to "reposition" their relationship to nature and ditch the mindset that "humans (can) control everything."

"Let's acknowledge the river is going to flood. Let's build the space for it."

Tokyo (AFP) – Japan is waging war on "host clubs" -- where men entertain women willing to pay for romance, but authorities and industry insiders say customers have long been scammed and saddled with debt.

Neatly coiffured, well-dressed "hosts" bedazzle women with sweet talk and the mirage of intimacy at glitzy establishments in big Japanese cities.

In return, the women pay inflated prices for champagne and other expensive drinks while they flirt, sometimes splurging tens of thousands of dollars a night.

Authorities are clamping down because of allegations that some women are being tricked into towering debts by hosts, and even into sex work to pay them off.

Under a new law that took effect in June, taking advantage of women's romantic feelings to manipulate them into ordering overpriced drinks has been banned.

This has sent shockwaves through an industry where pseudo-romance, from casual flirtation to after-hours sex, has long driven relationships with clients. Emotional dependence

John Reno, a star host in Tokyo's red-light district Kabukicho, said the crackdown was "unsurprising" after "scammer-like hosts increased".

Hosts, he told AFP, used to employ intimacy primarily to entertain women.

But "their mindset today is basically 'if you love me, then don't complain,' silencing women and exploiting their emotional dependence", the 29-year-old owner of Club J said.

A growing number of victims have reported financial and sexual exploitation linked to these establishments.

Official data shows there were around 2,800 host club-related cases reported to police in 2024, up from 2,100 two years before. These have ranged from hosts ordering drinks the clients did not ask for, to prostitution.

Some hosts are racking up profits by introducing their cash-strapped clients to brokers known as "scouts", who then send them into the sex trade, police say.

Women, for their part, strive to work hard for their crush.

"These hosts in return promise them their effort will be rewarded with actual relationships or marriage," Reno said.

"That's outright fraud," he added, while denying that his Club J employees engage in any such practices.

Difficulties such as poverty and abuse often make hosts the only escape for young women with low self-esteem, campaigners say.

While high-flying businesswomen used to be the main clientele, girls "with no place to be" are increasingly seeking refuge, Arata Sakamoto, head of Kabukicho-based non-profit Rescue Hub, told AFP.

To them, "host clubs have become a place where they feel accepted" and "reassured they can be who they are, albeit in exchange for money", he said.

One recent night saw a 26-year-old woman surrounded by smiling men at a table of flamboyant Kabukicho club Platina.

"Some hosts are bad enough to brainwash you, but I would say women should also know better than to drink far more than they can afford," the woman, a freelancer in the media industry who declined to be named, told AFP.

Another customer comes to Platina to "spice up my mundane life".

"I hope this will remain a place that keeps my female hormones overflowing," the 34-year-old IT worker said.

The new law does not ban intimacy, but behaviour such as threatening to end relationships with clients if they refuse to order drinks.

Industry insiders like Platina owner Ran Sena call the law "too vague".

"For example, if a client tells me, 'I'm about to fall in love with you,' does that mean I'll have to forbid her from coming to see me again?" he said.

Another disruptive change is also rocking the industry.

Police have notified clubs that any billboard advertising that hypes up the sales and popularity of individual hosts is no longer acceptable.

The rationale is that these bombastic, neon-lit signs boasting "No.1" status or "multimillion" sales can fuel competition among hosts and push them further toward profit-mongering.

Self-identifying as Kabukicho's "conqueror," "god" or "king", and egging on prospective customers to "drown themselves" in love, for example, is similarly banned.

To comply, clubs have hurriedly covered such slogans on Kabukicho billboards, defacing the pouting portraits of hosts with black tape.

This signals a "huge" morale crisis for hosts, Sena says.

"It's been the aspiration of many hosts to be called No.1, earn a title and become famous in this town," he said.

"Now, they don't even know what they should strive for," the 43-year-old added.

For women, too, the rankings were a way to reassure themselves that the money they spent on their "oshi (favourite)" hosts was not in vain -- proof they were helping them ascend in the cutthroat hosts industry.

"I think the industry is heading toward decline," Sena said.

New Radnor (United Kingdom) (AFP) – A nearly 200-year-old pub, the Radnor Arms in rural Wales stood abandoned a few years ago. Water ran down the walls, ivy crept around broken windows and rats' skeletons littered the floor.

Fast forward to 2025 and laughter rings out of the newly reopened watering hole after locals clubbed together to save it.

The pub, which first opened in the 1830s, is one of tens of thousands across the UK forced to call last orders over recent years.

Once the heart of the village, the Radnor Arms -- which had become uneconomic due to rising costs -- was shut by the landlord in 2016 and quickly fell into ruin.

For locals in the picturesque south Wales village of New Radnor, population 438, the demise of their only remaining hostelry was devastating.

Over the years, there were around six or more pubs or ale houses in the village. By 2012, all except the Radnor Arms had shut down.

"It was the heart of the village," said David Pyle, a 57-year-old retired psychiatrist who has lived next door to the pub for the past 18 years.

"Sometimes you could hear a bit of hubbub, sometimes you'd hear a roar go up when Wales scored, or a male voice choir singing in the back bar," he told AFP.

"It was just lovely," he said. "And then it closed."

UK pubs, a quintessential cornerstone of community life, are increasingly under threat.

Faced with changing drinking habits and spiralling bills, more than a quarter of the 60,800 in existence in 2000 have closed their doors in the past 25 years.

Of the 45,000 still operating at the end of last year, 378 -- at least one a day -- are expected to close this year, according to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA).

The loss of Radnor Arms in 2016 left the village without a focal point, hitting everyone from hobby groups to local hill farmers who would meet there after work for a pint of beer and a chat.

"It was the heart of the community. It was a place where anybody could come in," said Sue Norton, one of a team of locals who banded together to save it.

"We celebrated births, deaths and marriages here. So for us, it was very emotional when it closed," she said.

Vowing to rescue it, Norton and other villagers applied to a government scheme aimed at giving people the financial firepower to take ownership of pubs or shops at risk of being lost.

A major fundraising effort last year drummed up £200,000 ($271,000), which was matched by the community ownership fund and boosted by an additional £40,000 government grant.

With £440,000 in the kitty, the villagers were able to buy, refurbish and re-open the pub, relying on a rota of volunteers to work behind the bar rather than paid staff.

Ukrainian refugee Eugene Marchenko, a 44-year-old lawyer who is one of the volunteers, says the pub helped him meet practically everyone within days of arriving.

Marchenko, from the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, is being hosted by a villager along with his wife and teenage son. He said he quickly came to understand the importance of having a place in the village for "drinking and having fun together".

"I read in books that the pub was a famous British tradition, but I can feel it myself... It's not just about the drinking alcohol, it's about the sharing and everybody knows each other," he said.

The previous Conservative government launched the community ownership fund in 2021.

Under the scheme locals have successfully saved around 55 pubs, according to the community ownership charity Plunkett UK.

The pubs are run democratically on a one-member, one-vote basis by those who contributed to the fundraiser.

But the new Labour government, which took power a year ago, dropped the scheme in December as they sought to meet competing funding demands.

Villagers in New Radnor are relieved to have got their application in under the wire but saddened that other communities will not benefit.

For now they are planning to make the most of their new community hub.

There are plans to host a range of activities -- from mother-and-baby mornings to a dementia group that aims to trigger memories through familiar sights and sounds.

Sufferers and their carers could come and have a "drink or a bag of crisps -- or a pickled onion, if people like those," Norton said.

Chiang Mai (Thailand) (AFP) – Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called "Big George."

Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers.

"They're playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats," he told AFP from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

Thailand's captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes.

Experts warn the trend endangers animals and humans, stretches authorities and likely fuels illicit trade domestically and abroad.

"It's absolute madness," said Tom Taylor, chief operating officer of conservation group Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand.

"It's terrifying to imagine, if the laws aren't changed, what the situation is going to be in 10 years."

The boom is fueled by social media, where owners like Tharnuwarht post light-hearted content and glamour shots with lions.

"I wanted to show people... that lions can actually bond well with humans," he said, insisting he plays regularly with his pets.

He entered Big George's enclosure tentatively though, spending just a few minutes being batted by the tawny striped liger's hefty paws before retreating behind a fence.

Since 2022, Thai law has required owners to register and microchip lions, and inform authorities before moving them.

But there are no breeding caps, few enclosure or welfare requirements, and no controls on liger or tigon hybrids.

Births of protected native species like tigers must be reported within 24 hours. Lion owners have 60 days.

"That is a huge window," said Taylor. "What could be done with a litter of cubs in those 60 days? Anything."

Taylor and his colleagues have tracked the rise in lion ownership with on-site visits and by trawling social media.

They recorded around 130 in 2018, and nearly 450 by 2024.

But nearly 350 more lions they encountered were "lost to follow-up" after their whereabouts could not be confirmed for a year.

That could indicate unreported deaths, an animal removed from display or "worst-case scenarios", said Taylor.

"We have interviewed traders (in the region) who have given us prices for live and dead lions and have told us they can take them over the border."

As a vulnerable species, lions and their parts can only be sold internationally with so-called CITES permits.

But there is circumstantial evidence of illicit trade, several experts told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering authorities.

Media reports and social media have documented lions, including cubs, in Cambodia multiple times in recent years, though CITES shows no registered imports since 2003.

There is also growing evidence that captive lion numbers in Laos exceed CITES import licences.

In Thailand, meanwhile, imports of lion parts like bones, skins and teeth have dropped in recent years, though demand remains, raising questions about how parts are now being sourced.

Thai trader Pathamawadee Janpithak started in the crocodile business, but pivoted to lions as prices for the reptiles declined.

"It gradually became a full-fledged business that I couldn't step away from," the gregarious 32-year-old told AFP in front of a row of caged cubs.

She sells one-month-olds for around 500,000 baht ($15,500), down from a peak of 800,000 baht as breeding operations like hers increase supply.

Captive lions are generally fed around two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of chicken carcasses a day, and can produce litters of two to six cubs, once or twice a year.

Pathamawadee's three facilities house around 80 lions, from a stately full-maned nine-year-old to a sickly pair of eight-day-olds being bottle-fed around the clock.

They are white because of a genetic mutation, and the smaller pool of white lions means inbreeding and sickness are common.

Sometimes wrongly considered a "threatened" subspecies, they are popular in Thailand, but a month-old white cub being reared alongside the newborns has been sick almost since birth.

It has attracted no buyers so far and will be unbreedable, Pathamawadee said.

She lamented the increasing difficulty of finding buyers willing to comply with ownership rules.

"In the past, people could just put down money and walk away with a lion... Everything has become more complicated."

Pathamawadee sells around half of the 90 cubs she breeds each year, often to other breeders, who are increasingly opening "lion cafes" where customers pose with and pet young lions.

Outside Chiang Mai, a handler roused a cub from a nap to play with a group of squealing Chinese tourists.

Staff let AFP film the interaction, but like all lion cafes contacted, declined interviews.

Pathamawadee no longer sells to cafes, which tend to offload cubs within weeks as they grow.

She said several were returned to her traumatised and no longer suitable for breeding.

The growing lion population is a problem for Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), admitted wildlife protection director Sadudee Punpugdee.

"But private ownership has existed for a long time... so we're taking a gradual approach," he told AFP.

That includes limiting lion imports so breeders are forced to rely on the domestic population.

"With inbreeding on the rise, the quality of the lions is also declining and we believe that demand will decrease as a result," Sadudee said.

Already stretched authorities face difficult choices on enforcing regulations, as confiscated animals become their responsibility, said Penthai Siriwat, illegal wildlife trade specialist at WWF Thailand.

"There is a great deal of deliberation before intervening... considering the substantial costs," she told AFP.

Owners like Tharnuwarht often evoke conservation to justify their pets, but Thailand's captive lions will never live in the wild.

Two-year-olds Khanom and Khanun live in a DNP sanctuary after being confiscated from a cafe and private owner over improper paperwork.

They could survive another decade or more, and require specialised keepers, food and care.

Sanctuary chief vet Natanon Panpeth treads carefully while discussing the lion trade, warning only that the "well-being of the animals should always come first".

Big cat ownership has been banned in the United States and United Arab Emirates in recent years, and Thailand's wildlife rules are soon up for review.

Sadudee is hopeful some provisions may be tightened, though a ban is unlikely for now.

He has his own advice for would-be owners: "Wild animals belong in the wild. There are plenty of other animals we can keep as pets."

Islam Qala (Afghanistan) (AFP) – At the border with Iran, Fatima Rezaei distributes food and hygiene products to Afghans forced to return, unable to passively stand by as the deportation crisis grows.

The 22-year-old is one of many Afghan volunteers rallying to help their compatriots, despite having little themselves.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 1.6 million Afghans, including many children, have returned after being deported or driven out of Iran, which accuses them of pushing up unemployment and crime.

"It doesn't matter whether you have a lot of money or not. I don't have much, but with the help of Afghans here and abroad, we manage," said Rezaei.

The number of crossings at the Islam Qala border has reached 30,000 on several days, peaking at 50,000 on July 4, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In response, residents of the western region have mobilised, partly thanks to donations sent by Afghans living in Europe or North America.

A journalist for a local television channel, Rezaei travels over 100 kilometres (62 miles) to reach the border from her hometown of Herat.

From a stack of cardboard boxes, she distributes baby wipes and sanitary towels to women gathered under a tent and surrounded by around a dozen children.

"It is our responsibility to stand by their side," she said.

"The government tries to help, but it's not enough."

International organisations are helping to register migrants but face massive budget cuts.

Meanwhile, Taliban authorities struggle to support the influx of Afghans who have often left everything behind and returned to a country mired in poverty.

Unemployed Hosna Salehi volunteers with her parents' charitable organisation, Khan-e-Meher, to distribute aid, such as infant formula.

"Some women with young children tried to breastfeed but didn't have enough milk due to stress," she told AFP.

"Our fellow Afghans need our support right now. We have a duty to give what we can, no matter if it is a little or a lot."

The show of solidarity "makes us proud", said Ahmadullah Wassiq, director of Afghanistan's High Commission for Refugees.

"The government cannot solve these problems alone," he acknowledged, "and the efforts of citizens must be applauded".

The Taliban government says it provides money upon arrival and is establishing towns dedicated to returning Afghans, though it does not specify when they will be ready.

In Herat, the nearest major city to the border, some in the most precarious circumstances have been living in parks in tents donated by residents.

Some said they were having to rebuild their lives after returning home.

"The only thing we're worried about is finding work," said Hussein, 33, who spent more than 10 years in Iran.

"There, they told us our papers were no longer valid. We had good jobs, now we need to find work and start from scratch," said the father-of-two, who was moved by the support he encountered on the Afghan side of the border.

"They really helped us and extended a hand," he said as he waited for a free bus to take him the nearly 1,000 kilometres to the capital Kabul.

In Afghanistan, where half the population of around 48 million lives below the poverty line according to the World Bank, "there isn't much of a culture of volunteering", said 27-year-old Omid Haqjoo, as he prepared food in vast cooking pots.

"But we are trying to promote it... to provide the support that is missing," he added.

After a day of heat in the humanitarian tents at Islam Qala, Salehi felt strengthened by a "life lesson".

"If I was able to help volunteer, I think everyone can," she said.

"And when I go home and think of all the fellow Afghans who smiled at me and prayed for me, that's enough for me."

Cairo (AFP) – On a sweltering Monday morning at Cairo's main railway station, hundreds of Sudanese families stood waiting, with bags piled at their feet and children in tow, to board a train bound for a homeland shattered by two years of war.

The war is not yet over, but with the army having regained control of key areas and life in Egypt often hard, many refugees have decided now is the time to head home.

"It's an indescribable feeling," said Khadija Mohamed Ali, 45, seated inside one of the train's ageing carriages, her five daughters lined beside her.

"I'm happy that I'll see my neighbours again -- my family, my street," she told AFP ahead of her return to the capital Khartoum, still reeling from a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 14 million.

She was among the second group of refugees travelling under Egypt's voluntary return programme, which offers free transportation from Cairo to Khartoum, more than 2,000 kilometres away by train and bus.

The first convoy left a week earlier.

The programme is a joint effort between the Egyptian National Railways and Sudan's state-owned arms company Defence Industries System, which is covering the full cost of the journey, including tickets and onward bus travel from Egypt's southern city of Aswan to the Sudanese capital.

The Sudanese army is keen for the refugees to return, in part to reinforce its control over recently recaptured areas and as a step towards normality.

Each Monday, a third-class, air-conditioned train departs Cairo carrying hundreds on a 12-hour journey to Aswan before they continue by bus across the border.

At precisely 11:30 am, a battered locomotive rumbled into the station and women broke into spontaneous ululation.

But while some Sudanese are returning home, many continue to flee their homeland, which has been ravaged by war and famine.

According to a June report from the UN's refugee agency UNHCR, over 65,000 Sudanese crossed into Chad in just over a month.

Crossings through Libya, one of the most dangerous routes to Europe, have increased this year, according to the Mixed Migration Center.

The war, which began in April 2023, pits army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his erstwhile ally Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The fighting first erupted in Khartoum and quickly spread, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations.

Earlier this year, Sudan's army declared it had fully retaken Khartoum. Since then, a trickle of returnees has begun.

Last week, the country's new prime minister, Kamil Idris, made his first visit to the capital since the conflict began, promising that "national institutions will come back stronger than before".

The UN has predicted that more than two million people could return to greater Khartoum by the end of the year, though that figure depends heavily on improvements in security and public infrastructure.

The capital remains a fractured city. Its infrastructure has been decimated, health services remain scarce and electricity is still largely out in many districts.

"Slowly things will become better," said Maryam Ahmed Mohamed, 52, who plans to return to her home in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman with her two daughters.

"At least we'll be back at home and with our family and friends," she told AFP.

For many, the decision to return home is driven less by hope than by hardship in neighbouring countries like Egypt.

Egypt now hosts an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese refugees, who have limited access to legal work, healthcare and education, according to the UNHCR.

Hayam Mohamed, 34, fled Khartoum's Soba district with her family to Egypt 10 months ago when the area was liberated, but was in ruins.

Though services remain nearly non-existent in Khartoum, Mohamed said she still wanted to leave Egypt and go home.

"Life was too expensive here. I couldn't afford rent or school fees," Mohamed said.

Elham Khalafallah, a mother of three who spent seven months in Egypt, also said she struggled to cope.

She's now returning to the central Al-Jazirah state, which was retaken by the army late last year and is seen as "much safer and having better services than Khartoum".

According to the UN's International Organization for Migration, about 71 percent of returnees were heading to Al-Jazirah, southeast of the capital, while fewer than 10 percent were going to Khartoum.

Just outside the Cairo station, dozens more were sitting on benches, hoping for standby tickets.

"They told me the train was full," said Maryam Abdullah, 32, who left Sudan two years ago with her six children.

"But I'll wait. I just want to go back, rebuild my house, and send my children back to school," she told AFP.

Taipei (AFP) – Taiwanese residents holding plastic bags of rubbish stand on a footpath as a yellow garbage truck playing classical music over a loudspeaker pulls up.

For decades, the tinkling of Beethoven's "Fur Elise" or Tekla Badarzewska-Baranowska's "Maiden's Prayer" has alerted Taiwanese households to take out their garbage.

Like clockwork, residents emerge from their apartment buildings carrying bags of pre-sorted rubbish as the musical garbage trucks approach.

"When we hear this music, we know it's time to take out the trash. It's very convenient," 78-year-old Lee Shu-ning told AFP as she waited outside her tower block in Taipei.

Residents toss plastic bags of general refuse into the yellow compaction truck, and tip food waste and recycling into bins carried by another vehicle.

For the elderly, taking out the trash has become a social event and many arrive early to sit and talk around the collection points.

"I can chat with some old neighbours and friends, it's nice," Lee said, before disposing of several bottles and cans.

"It's also a kind of exercise," she added.

But not everyone is a fan.

"I think it's quite inconvenient because it comes at a fixed time every day," said 31-year-old beautician Dai Yun-wei after dumping her rubbish in the truck.

"Sometimes we're not home or we're busy, so we can't throw away the trash."

Taiwan's musical garbage trucks have been an almost daily feature of life on the island since the 1960s, Shyu Shyh-shiun of Taipei's Department of Environmental Protection told AFP.

Taiwan imported German garbage trucks pre-programmed with "Fur Elise", Shyu said, but added it was not clear how the "Maiden's Prayer" became part of the repertoire.

The trucks operate five days a week, usually in the late afternoon and evening.

Yang Xiu-ying, 76, has made a living out of helping her neighbours dispose of their garbage.

She receives NT$11,200 ($380) a month from 28 households in her lane to sort their trash, load it onto a trolley and take it to the refuse trucks.

"Some people get off work late, some elderly people find it inconvenient, so they take it downstairs and I dump the garbage for them," Yang said, wearing two layers of gloves and long protective sleeves.

Others have turned to digital solutions for their rubbish problem.

The young founders of Tracle created an app enabling people to book a time for their trash to be taken away.

"I think our value is that we save a lot of time for them," co-founder Ben Chen said.

"We enhance their life quality."

Over the past 30 years, Taiwan has been cleaning up its waste management act.

An economic boom had led to an explosion of garbage, with almost no recycling, landfills overflowing and people protesting air and ground pollution.

In response, the island ramped up recycling, increased incineration and made people responsible for sorting and dumping their own trash in the trucks instead of leaving it on the ground for collection.

Taipei residents are also required to buy government-approved blue plastic bags for their general waste to encourage them to use less and recycle more.

"In the beginning, everybody feels... that it's not very convenient," Shyu said.

But once people started noticing the cleaner streets, "they feel this is a good policy".

The city's recycling rate has surged to nearly 67 percent, from two percent in 2000, and the amount of garbage sent for incineration has fallen by two-thirds, Shyu said.

And, he said, smiling, the trucks are "almost" always on time.

Undisclosed (Ukraine) (AFP) – A menacing buzz reverberates through the night sky in eastern Ukraine. Explosions ring out, flashes illuminate sunflower fields below and the smell of gunpowder poisons the air.

"There! Three kilometres away!" shouted one Ukrainian serviceman in the air defence unit equipped with Soviet-era weapons and tasked with intercepting Russian drones, before they home in on Ukrainian towns and cities.

The long-range unmanned aerial vehicles originally designed by Iran but improved and launched by Moscow have been devastating Ukraine since the early chapters of the Kremlin's invasion launched in early 2022.

Moscow has trumpeted its industrial-scale production of the cheap weapons, with state-television broadcasting what it called the world's largest drone factory.

The rare footage showed the assembly of hundreds of jet-black triangle-shaped Gerans -- geraniums in Russian.

On the night in July that AFP embedded with an air defence unit in Ukraine's eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russia launched 344 drones, but its largest-ever barrage comprised of more than 700.

"It's rotten tonight, just like the day before," said one serviceman in the air defence unit, leaning over a radar.

Increasingly sophisticated Gerans are flying at higher altitudes and able to alter course en route, but Vasyl's unit is equipped with old, short-range weapons.

"They fly chaotically and unpredictably. It has become harder to destroy them," the 49-year-old told AFP.

"We're effective, but I can't promise that it will be like this every week," he added.

Oleksandr, a fellow serviceman defending airspace near Pavlograd city, was scrutinising a radar where hundreds of red dots were appearing.

"There's nothing we can do. It's not our area," he said of the incoming drones.

His 20-year-old daughter, who lives in Pavlograd, was not answering her phone, he told AFP while lighting a cigarette.

"But I warned her," added Oleksandr, who like others in this story identified himself with his first name or army nickname in line with military protocol.

An explosion boomed, the horizon glowed crimson and dark smoke appeared in the sky moments later.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has secured several Patriot batteries from allies since the invasion began and is appealing for funding for 10 more systems.

But the sophisticated systems are reserved for fending off Russian missile attacks on high-priority targets and larger cities.

Ukraine is instead seeking to roll out cheap interceptor drones to replace units like Vasyl's, and Zelensky has tasked manufacturers with producing up to 1,000 per day.

"People and modern weapons" are what Ukraine needs to defend its air space, Vasyl told AFP.

The teams get little sleep -- two hours on average, or four on a good night, and perhaps another one between drone waves, Vasyl said, adding that the deprivation takes a physical toll.

One serviceman with another air defence unit in the eastern Donetsk region, who goes by Wolf, told AFP he has problems sleeping anyway due to grim memories he has fighting in east Ukraine.

Belyi who works alongside Wolf was assigned to the unit regiment after he sustained a concussion and a shell blew off part of his hand while he was fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Both were miners in eastern Ukraine before Moscow invaded.

Russian drones are threatening their families in the city of Kryvyi Rig, in the neighbouring region further west.

Neither has been granted leave to visit home in more than two years and they are instead working around the clock, seven days a week.

Back near Pavlograd, sunrise reveals dark circles under the soldiers' eyes, but the buzz of a new drone wave emerges from the horizon.

The unit's anti-aircraft gun fires one volley of tracer rounds, then jams. The team grabs WWII-era machine guns and fire blindly in the air.

Another drone in the Russian arsenal is the Gerbera, once an unarmed decoy used to overwhelm air defence systems that have since been fitted with cameras and are targeting Vasyl's team.

"Only fools are not afraid. Really," he said.

On his phone he showed an image of his two blond-haired children who are now living in the capital Kyiv -- also under escalating bombardments.

"I'm here for them," he told AFP.

Tunis (AFP) – A towel draped over his head, Hamza Jabbari sets bags of plastic bottles onto a scale. He is among Tunisia's "barbechas", informal plastic recyclers whose increasing numbers reflect the country's economic -- and migratory -- woes.

The 40-something-year-old said he starts the day off at dawn, hunching over bins and hunting for plastic before the rubbish trucks and other plastic collectors come.

"It's the most accessible work in Tunisia when there are no job offers," Jabbari said, weighing a day's haul in Bhar Lazreg, a working-class neighbourhood north of the capital, Tunis.

The work is often gruelling, with a kilogramme of plastic bottles worth only 0.5 to 0.7 Tunisian dinar -- less than $0.25.

In Tunis, it's common to see women weighed down by bags of plastic bottles along the roadside, or men weaving through traffic with towering loads strapped to their motorcycles.

"Everyone does it," said Jabbari.

Hamza Chaouch, head of the National Chamber of Recyclable Waste Collectors, estimated that there were roughly 25,000 plastic collectors across Tunisia, with 40 percent of them in the capital.

Yet, with the job an informal one, there is no official count of how many plastic collectors operate in Tunisia.

One thing is certain: their number has increased in recent years, said Chaouch, who also runs a plastic collection centre south of Tunis.

"It's because of the cost of living," he explained.

"At first, it was people with no income, but for the past two years, workers, retirees and cleaning women have also turned to this work as a supplementary job."

Around 16 percent of Tunisians lived under the poverty line as of 2021, the latest available official figures.

Unemployment currently hovers around 16 percent, with inflation at 5.4 percent.

The ranks of these recyclers have also grown with the arrival of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa -- often hoping to reach Europe but caught in limbo with both the EU and Tunis cracking down on Mediterranean crossings.

Tunisia is a key transit country for thousands of sub-Saharan migrants seeking to reach Europe by sea each year, with the Italian island of Lampedusa only 150 kilometres (90 miles) away.

Abdelkoudouss, a 24-year-old from Guinea, said he began collecting plastic to make ends meet but also to save up enough money to return home after failing two crossing attempts to Europe.

For the past two months, he has worked at a car wash, he said, but the low pay forced him to start recycling on the side.

"Life here is not easy," said Abdelkoudouss, adding he came to the capital after receiving "a lot of threats" amid tension between migrants and locals in Sfax, a coastal city in central Tunisia.

Thousands of migrants had set up camp on the outskirts of Sfax, before authorities began dismantling the makeshift neighbourhoods this year.

Tensions flared in early 2023 when President Kais Saied said "hordes of sub-Saharan migrants" were threatening the country's demographic composition.

Saied's statement was widely circulated online and unleashed a wave of hostility that many migrants feel still lingers.

"There's a strong rivalry in this work," said Jabbari, glancing at a group of sub-Saharan African migrants nearby.

"These people have made life even more difficult for us. I can't collect enough plastic because of them."

Chaouch, the collection centre manager, was even more blunt: "We don't accept sub-Saharans at our centre. Priority goes to Tunisians."

In contrast, 79-year-old Abdallah Omri, who heads another centre in Bhar Lazreg, said he "welcomes everyone".

"The people who do this work are just trying to survive, whether they're Tunisian, sub-Saharan or otherwise," he said.

"We're cleaning up the country and feeding families," he added proudly.

Diwaniyah (Iraq) (AFP) – Iraqi table tennis player Nur al-Huda Sarmad adjusts her wheelchair before striking the ball into play, braving sweltering heat, social stigma and inadequate facilities as she dreams of taking her team to the Paralympics.

Sarmad and seven other Iraqi women who live with disabilities train three times a week at a community centre in the southern city of Diwaniyah, preparing for an upcoming tournament that could qualify them for the national Paralympic team.

The facilities, however, are far from Olympic-standard.

"The tennis tables are broken, there are power outages and we even have to buy our own paddles," said Sarmad, 25.

With no dedicated training facility, the team often has to share the three second-hand tables at the public community centre with visitors.

In the scorching Iraqi summer they cannot turn on the fans, which would disrupt the movement of the balls.

And the air conditioner that could provide some relief remains off-limits in a country grappling with chronic power cuts, especially in summer when temperatures approach 50C. The community centre is powered by a generator, but it can barely sustain the essentials.

These practical issues "affect our training" and hinder the players' progress, Sarmad said.

The team also faces obstacles in the form of insufficient government funding for sports, and conservative views on women's rights and people with disabilities.

Paralympic champion Najlah Imad, the first Iraqi to snare a gold medal in table tennis, told AFP that "despite the difficult circumstances, nothing is impossible".

Imad, who now relies on sponsorship deals, encouraged her fellow players to keep fighting.

"You can do anything," she said.

Sarmad, who has already won several medals including bronze in a tournament in Thailand, takes pride in the fact that despite the many challenges, "we overcame all this, we became players".

The state-owned community centre provides the team a stipend equivalent to $75 a month to cover transportation costs, but the players had to purchase their professional paddles, at a cost of $200, out of their own pockets.

The players often have to rely on taxis to travel to training sessions and back, but "sometimes cabs refuse to take disabled people", said Sarmad.

Coach Mohammed Riyad, 43, said that table tennis "has developed in Diwaniyah solely through personal efforts... due to the lack of support from the state".

Riyad, a member of the Iraqi Paralympic Committee, said that funding sports was not a priority in a country where decades of conflicts, neglect and endemic corruption have devastated infrastructure.

Through the Paralympic Committee, he has managed to acquire old equipment for Sarmad and her fellow players.

He said that "the state only focuses on football, despite the achievements of table tennis players" like Imad, who brought home the Paralympic gold from the 2024 Paris Games.

Iraq has a long tradition of women's sports, with teams competing in regional football, weightlifting and boxing tournaments.

But there is also vocal opposition seeking to exclude women and bar mixed-gender events.

In southern Iraq, a largely conservative area where Sarmad's team is based, organisers of a marathon last year had made it a men-only event after a social media controversy over women's participation in sports.

Iraqis living with disabilities often face additional challenges amid a general lack of awareness about their rights and inclusion.

For award-winning table tennis player Iman Hamza, 24, society mistakenly sees women with disabilities like her "as helpless people who cannot do anything".

"But we became world champions."

Wellington (AFP) – New Zealand sheep farmers are fighting to stop the loss of pasture to fast-spreading pine plantations, which earn government subsidies to soak up carbon emissions.

Concern over the scale of the farm-to-forest switch led the government to impose a moratorium in December on any new conversions not already in the pipeline.

But farmers say forestry companies are flouting the clampdown.

Last month, farmers launched a "Save our Sheep" campaign to reverse the loss of productive farmland.

Sheep numbers have plummeted to around 23 million, down from a peak of around 70 million in the 1980s, according to official figures.

Falling wool prices and rising milk and beef costs initially drove the decline, but the emissions trading since 2008 has added to the strain.

The government is now investigating potential breaches of its moratorium by forestry companies, which have been buying up farmland as recently as June.

Federated Farmers -- a lobby group for rural communities -- submitted to the government "a list of properties we believe have been sold for carbon forestry" since the halt, a spokesman said.

The federation is concerned about the sale of more than 15,200 hectares (37,600 acres) of farmland, he told AFP.

Dean Rabbidge, who runs a farm outside the Southland town of Wyndham, said some of the newly purchased farms had already been planted with pine trees.

"They're just ploughing on ahead, effectively giving the middle finger to the government announcement," Rabbidge told AFP.

The moratorium had created a "gold rush", he said.

"It's criminal what's happening."

Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay said the government would change the law by October because it had become more profitable to plant pine forests than to farm sheep.

"The law will include clarity on what qualifies as legitimate evidence of a pre-December investment and enable any specific cases to be properly assessed," McClay said.

"Anyone who has bought land since December 4, 2024, irrespective of whether they also had trees or not, will not be able to register this land into the emissions trading scheme."

Rural New Zealand once abounded with rolling pastures, rickety wire fences hemming in millions of sheep chewing on the green grass.

But Rabbidge said those days were gone.

"You won't see anything now," he said. "You're just driving through long pine tree tunnels -- shaded, wet, and damp."

New Zealand is one of the rare countries to allow 100 percent of carbon emissions to be offset by forestry.

"We're not anti planting trees," sheep farmer Ben Fraser told AFP.

"There are areas of land that should be retired, that aren't necessarily productive."

But the trading scheme had driven an excessive loss of sheep pastures to forestry, he said.

"That's the issue here."

Fraser, who farms near the North Island town of Ohakune, said he had seen an exodus of people from the district in recent years.

"Since 2018, there've been 17 farms converted to forestry," he said.

"That's about 18,000 hectares gone. So you're looking at about 180,000 sheep gone out of the district, plus lambs."

The loss of sheep impacted the region.

"If the farms thrive, then the towns thrive because people come in and spend their money," he said.

"You've got farm suppliers, your fertiliser guys, your supermarkets, your butchers, all of that stuff struggling.

"The local schools now have less kids in them. The people who stayed are now isolated, surrounded by pine trees."

Rabbidge said the same was happening in Southland.

"This whole thing is just so short-sighted," Rabbidge said.

"Businesses here are forecasting anywhere between a 10 and 15 percent revenue reduction for the next financial year, and that's all on the back of properties that have sold or have been planted out in pine trees," he said.

"Think of all the shearers, the contractors, the transporters, the farm supply stores, the workers, the community centres, the schools, rugby clubs. Everything is affected by this."

Government figures from 2023 show agriculture accounted for more than half of New Zealand's total greenhouse gas emissions.

But farmers argue they have been working hard to reduce emissions, down more than 30 percent since the 1990s.

"I could put a leg of lamb on a plate in London with a lower emissions profile, transport included, than a British farmer," Rabbidge said.

"We just use our natural resources. We're not housing animals indoors and carting feed in and manure out.

"Everything's done outside and done at low cost, low and moderate intensity."

Kanthararom (Thailand) (AFP) – As Cambodia and Thailand traded deadly strikes, fleeing civilians on both sides described their cross-border neighbours as "siblings" and "friends" -- swapping calls for peace against the backdrop of artillery barrages.

The death toll from three days of fighting has risen to 33, the majority civilians, after a long-running border dispute sharply escalated into combat waged with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops.

"Relations used to be good -– we were like siblings," said 56-year-old Sai Boonrod, one of hundreds of Thais sheltering at a temple in the town of Kanthararom after evacuating her border village home.

"But now things may have changed," she told AFP. "I just want the fighting to end so we can go back to being like siblings again."

Over the Cambodian border, 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Sai's temporary home, a similar scene plays out: hundreds of evacuees huddled in makeshift tents on a temple site, surrounded by emergency food rations and their hastily packed clothes.

"We are neighbours, we want to be friends," one 50-year-old told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity at the temple shelter in Phumi Bak Thkav.

"But they are attacking us. We are fleeing homes because of them."

Tensions have long flared over the countries' shared 800-kilometre border, peppered with ancient temple sites claimed by both nations.

The previous most deadly clashes broke out between 2008 and 2011 -- leaving at least 28 people dead.

But stretching her legs on a bamboo mat, Sai said "it was never this violent" in previous times.

She is one of more than 170,000 evacuated from the countries' border zones, but her husband stayed behind to help guard neighbours' livestock and belongings.

"I want them to negotiate, to stop firing quickly... so the elderly can return home and the children can go back to school," she said.

The UN Security Council held an urgent meeting on Friday and both sides have said they are open to a truce -- but accused the other of undermining armistice efforts.

This flare-up began with a gun battle in late May killing one Cambodian soldier, and festered with tit-for-tat trade restrictions and border closures before hostilities spiked on Thursday.

At 73 years old, Suwan Promsri has lived through many episodes of border friction -- but said this one feels "so much different".

He said resentment of Cambodians among Thais -- including himself -- is growing, with patriotic online discourse fanning the flames.

In February, Bangkok formally protested to Phnom Penh after a video of women singing a patriotic Khmer song in front of a disputed temple was posted on social media.

The fighting has also been accompanied by a wave of online misinformation and disinformation from both sides.

"Before the internet, I felt indifferent," said Suwan. "But social media really plays a part in fuelling this hatred."

Despite the divisions, he is united with his Thai neighbours, and those over the border in Cambodia, in his calls for peace.

"I want the government to realise that people along the border are suffering. Life is difficult," he said.

"I hope the authorities work on negotiations to end the fighting as soon as possible."

Oddar Meanchey (Cambodia) (AFP) – In the leafy grounds of a Buddhist pagoda, hundreds of Cambodians fleeing deadly clashes with Thailand take refuge in the open air, most sitting on the ground while a lucky few doze in hammocks.

The deadliest fighting in over a decade between the two neighbours has sent thousands of villagers fleeing the border zone in Cambodia.

As artillery clashes erupted Thursday, Salou Chan, 36, grabbed some belongings, clothes, his two kids, and sped away from his home, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from disputed temples on the frontline.

"I fear for the safety of my children, they are still small. For me, I could have stayed at home, but I worried for my children -- they were scared of the sound of gunfire," he told AFP.

"I don't know when I will be able to return home but I want them to stop fighting soon. Nobody's looking after my rice paddy and livestock."

He and his family have joined hundreds of others in the grounds of the temple in Oddar Meanchey province.

With no proper shelter, most sit on the bare ground and rig up makeshift tents with plastic sheeting.

The evacuees have only the food and water they brought with them to sustain them while they wait for the chance to go home.

A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting on Thursday with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops doing battle, and more exchanges on Friday.

Thailand says more than 138,000 people have been evacuated from its border regions, and 15 people killed.

Cambodia has been more tight-lipped about casualties, though Oddar Meanchey provincial authorities reported one civilian -- a 70-year-old man -- had been killed and five more wounded.

Chhorn Khik, 55, who fled to the pagoda with her two grandchildren, said she was relieved to have escaped the conflict zone.

"I am no longer scared. Yesterday I was so scared, I was crying along the way," she told AFP.

"I feel pity for the soldiers at the frontline. We are scared, but we could escape, but those soldiers, they are fighting for us and the nation."

Thailand has said it is willing to start talks but also warned that the conflict could develop into a full-blown war if Cambodia is not willing to de-escalate.

Yoeun Rai, 55, who fled with 10 of her family, said she was so anxious she could not eat.

"I am praying this will end soon so that we can go back home," she told AFP.

Surin (Thailand) (AFP) – When the first salvo of Cambodian artillery screamed across her village, Thai seamstress Pornpan Sooksai's thoughts turned to her five beloved cats: Peng, Kung Fu, Cherry, Taro and Batman.

"I suddenly heard a loud bang," the 46-year-old told AFP. "Then our neighbour shouted, 'They've started shooting!' So everyone scrambled to grab their things."

Nearly 140,000 people have been evacuated from the Thai frontier, fleeing with the belongings dearest to them as the country trades deadly strikes with neighbouring Cambodia for a second day.

Pornpan was hanging out laundry in her village in the border district of Phanom Dong Rak, but did not hesitate to corral her quintet of cats -- even as the cross-border blasts rang out.

"Luckily they were still in the house. I put them in crates, loaded everything into the truck, and we got out," she said at a shelter in nearby Surin city, camping out alongside her fellow evacuees.

Tensions have been building between Thailand and Cambodia since late May, when a Cambodian soldier was shot dead in a firefight over a long-contested border region.

Tit-for-tat trade curbs and border closures escalated into conflict on Thursday, and each side has accused the other of firing the opening shot in the battle now being waged with jets, artillery, tanks and troops.

At least 16 people have been killed, according to tolls from both sides, the majority of them civilians.

But Pornpan was well-prepared to save her felines.

"Since I heard about the possible conflict two months ago, I stocked up on food and bought cat carriers," she said.

"If I leave the cats behind, they'd die."

Alongside her cats, Ponrpan also evacuated nine other family members, including her elderly mother with Alzheimer's.

The process took its toll once the adrenaline wore off midway through their escape.

"I was terrified the whole time. I was scared the bombs would hit us or the house," she said.

"I had a panic attack in the car. My body went numb. I had to go to hospital during the evacuation."

At the Surin city shelter her cats have been installed in their portable kennels -- drawing curious children waiting out the conflict alongside their parents on the gymnasium floor.

Skittish from the sudden onset of gunfire, they are slowly recovering from their ordeal.

"One kept trying to escape its crate, wouldn't eat and kept crying," Pornpan said.

q"Another one was panting -– maybe heatstroke. I had to splash water on it."

Surin (Thailand) (AFP) – Sitting on plastic mats in a sports hall, desperate evacuees told AFP of fleeing in terror from thunderous artillery bombardments as Thailand and Cambodia clash.

More than 100,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in four Thai border provinces amid the worst fighting between the two neighbours in over a decade.

As artillery fire thundered on Thursday, thousands of people in northeastern Surin province fled their homes and sought refuge in makeshift shelters set up in the town centre.

In the sports hall of Surindra Rajabhat University, nearly 3,000 people were packed tight on rows of plastic mats, scattered with colourful blankets and hastily packed personal belongings.

"I'm worried about our home, our animals, and the crops we've worked so hard on," Thidarat Homhuan, 37, told AFP.

She fled with nine other family members, including her 87-year-old grandmother who had just been discharged from hospital.

"That concern is still there. But being here does feel safer, since we're further from the danger zone now. At least we're safe," she said.

Thidarat was babysitting for a teacher at a local school when she heard what she described as "something like machine gun fire", followed by the heavy thud of artillery.

"It was chaos. The kids were terrified. I rushed to the school's bunker," she said.

Inside the shelter, evacuees slept side by side beneath the gym's high roof, surrounded by the hum of electric fans and quiet murmurs of uncertainty.

The elderly lay bundled in blankets, babies dozed in cradles while youngsters played quietly. Pet cats rested in mesh pop-up crates near the public restroom.

It is the first time the university has been fully activated as a shelter site, said Chai Samoraphum, director of the university's president's office.

Classes were abruptly cancelled, and within an hour, the campus was converted into a functioning evacuation centre.

Thousands of evacuees from four districts next to the border were placed into six locations across the campus.

"Most of them left in a hurry. Some have chronic health conditions but didn't bring their medications, others only managed to grab a few belongings," Chai told AFP.

With help from the provincial hospital, the centre is also caring for people with chronic illnesses and providing mental health services for those struggling with trauma, Chai said.

Border clashes between the two nations have left at least 14 people dead in Thailand, officials said, including one soldier and civilians caught in a rocket strike near a petrol station in Sisaket province.

Thidarat said the current conflict feels more severe than the last major clashes in 2011.

"It wasn't this serious back then. People's houses weren't damaged like this. There were no announcements about civilians being injured," Thidarat said.

"This year is much worse -- the number of deaths and injuries is really devastating."

As clashes go on near the border, there is no clear timeline for when people can return home.

For now, the shelter provides a sense of safety -- and a place to wait for a sign that it's safe to "go back to normal life," Thidarat said.

She already had a message for those in power: "I want the government to take decisive action -- don't wait until lives are lost."

"Civilians look up to (the government) for protection, and we rely on them deeply," she said.

Koatinemo (Brasil) (AFP) – A ceramic pot and the shell of a turtle, once hunted for its meat, are the most recent traces of an Indigenous community thought to live deep in the north Brazilian Amazon.

Archaeological finds like these keep turning up, and date back to at least 2009, with members of a neighboring clan claiming to have caught glimpses of individuals who live in the Ituna/Itata region in Brazil's northern Para state.

For now, the nameless, elusive people -- perhaps belonging to more than one group -- remain among dozens of so-called "uncontacted" communities believed to roam the world's biggest rainforest.

"My sister-in-law told me: 'Over there! Over there!' And it was a little boy staring at me from up close," recounted Takamyi Asurini, an elder in Ita'aka -- an Indigenous village of about 300, whose accounts of close encounters have fed theories of the existence of uncontacted people in Ituna/Itata.

Asurini showed AFP a scar on his ribs he said was the result of being shot with an arrow by an unknown person in the jungle.

Such testimonies, and the objects found, are not considered proof of the existence of people in Ituna/Itata.

But it is enough for the region to enjoy a provisional protected status meant to prevent invasions by miners, loggers and ranchers -- preserving both the forest and the people thought to live there.

The area covers tens of thousands of hectares and is similar in size to Sao Paolo -- the biggest city in Latin America.

It became one of the most overrun Indigenous territories in Brazil under former president Jair Bolsonaro, a backer of agro-industry on whose watch Amazon deforestation surged.

Now, lobby groups want the Ituna/Itata region's protection to be made permanent, which would mean stricter land use rules and enforcement.

For this to happen, the government's National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai) would have to send expeditions to look for undeniable proof of the group's existence.

Part of the challenge is the dense Amazon jungle is home to rich, varied ecosystems that support migratory agriculture for Indigenous peoples, who may travel to hunt, fish and gather food seasonally.

Under law, any searchers cannot make contact with them -- potentially putting them at risk of diseases they have no immunity to -- but are to look instead for footprints of their life in the forest.

Brazil recognizes 114 "uncontacted" Indigenous groups who live with no or minimal interaction with others.

About a quarter are "confirmed," while for the rest -- like in Ituna/Itata -- there is "strong evidence" that they exist.

For Luiz Fernandes, a member of umbrella group Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), there has been "historial neglect" of the issue by the state, which he says "recognizes the possibility of the existence of these peoples but does not guarantee effective measures to protect the territory."

Added Mita Xipaya, an Indigenous activist: "the state needs qualified records" to prove that an area hosts uncontacted people, "but for us it is different: we perceive them in nature, in the sounds we hear, their presences, sometimes their smells."

The Brazilian Amazon has lost nearly a third of its native vegetation since records began in 1988, according to environmental NGO Instituto Socioambiental -- except in Indigenous territories where the figure is less than two percent.

From 2019 to 2022, the Bolsonaro government suspended the provisional protection measures decreed for Ituna/Itata, prompting an invasion by land grabbers, turning it into the most deforested Indigenous area in Brazil.

Though the protection was reinstated under his leftist successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the consequences persist, and miles-wide patches of devastated soil intersperse areas of green rainforest, AFP observed during a recent flyover.

Brazil will in November host the COP30 UN climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belem under Lula, who has sought to position himself as a leader in forest preservation and the fight against global warming.

"It's not just about taking care of the forest but also of the people who inhabit it, because it's through them that the forest remains standing," COIAB coordinator Toya Manchineri told AFP.

Rarotonga (Cook Islands) (AFP) – A 1,000-tonne ship is exploring the far-flung South Pacific for riches buried beneath the waves, spearheading efforts to dredge the tropical waters for industrial deep-sea mining.

Fringed by sparkling lagoons and palm-shaded beaches, Pacific nation the Cook Islands has opened its vast ocean territory for mining exploration.

Research vessels roam the seas searching for deposits of battery metals, rare earths and critical minerals that litter the deep ocean's abyssal plains.

The frontier industry is likened by some to a modern-day gold rush, and decried by others as environmental "madness".

AFP visited the sunburst-orange MV Anuanua Moana at the Cook Islands' sleepy port of Avatiu, where it loaded supplies before setting sail for the archipelago's outer reaches.

"The resource in our field is probably in the order of about US$4 billion in potential value," said chief executive Hans Smit from Moana Minerals, which converted the former supply ship into a deepwater research vessel.

It is fitted with chemistry labs, sonar arrays and sensors used to probe the seabed for coveted metals.

For two years it has sailed the Cook Islands, halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, gathering data to convince regulators that deep-sea mining is safe.

While exploration is far advanced, no company has started mining on a commercial scale.

"I want to be mining before 2030," Smit said from the ship's tower, as whirring cranes loaded wooden crates of heavy gear below.

"Absolutely, I think that we can."

Large tracts of seabed around the Cook Islands are carpeted in polymetallic nodules, misshapen black globes encrusted with cobalt, nickel, manganese and other coveted metals.

Demand has been driven by the rise of electric vehicles, rechargeable batteries and durable alloys used in everything from construction to medicine.

The Cook Islands lay claim to one of just four major nodule deposits globally.

Moana Minerals -- a subsidiary of a Texas-based company -- owns the rights to explore 20,000 square kilometres (7,500 square miles) within the Cook Islands' exclusive economic zone.

"If we put one mining ship on there, and we started producing metals, we will be one of the largest mines around," said Smit.

Few countries are as reliant on the ocean as the Cook Islands, a seafaring nation of some 17,000 people scattered across a chain of volcanic isles and coral atolls.

Pristine lagoons lure wealthy tourists that prop-up the economy, fridges are stocked with fish plucked from vibrant reefs, and local myths teach children to revere the sea.

Many Cook Islanders fear deep-sea mining could taint their precious "moana", or ocean, forever.

"I have seen the ship in the harbour," said tour guide Ngametua Mamanu, 55.

"Why do we need the mining stuff to destroy the oceans?"

Retiree Ana Walker, 74, feared foreign interests had come to plunder her island home.

"We think that these people are coming over to make money and to leave the mess with us."

Deep-sea mining companies tout the need for critical minerals to make electric vehicles, solar panels and other "green" technologies.

The idea holds some allure in a place like the Cook Islands, where climate change is linked to droughts, destructive cyclones and rising seas.

"If all goes well, there is good that can come out of it. Financially," said third-generation pearl farmer James Kora, 31.

"But it relies on how well we manage all those minerals. If the science says it's safe."

Marine biologist Teina Rongo squinted into the sunlight as his small boat motored past the Anuanua Moana, an emblem of an industry he views with deep distrust.

"We were never about exploring the bottom of the ocean, because our ancestors believed it is a place of the gods," said Rongo.

"We don't belong there."

Deep-sea mining companies are still figuring the best way to retrieve nodules that can lie five kilometres (three miles) or more beneath the waves.

Most focus on robotic harvesting machines, which scrape up nodules as they crawl the ocean floor.

Critics fear mining will smother marine life with plumes of waste, and that the alien noise of heavy machinery will disrupt oceanic migrations.

Environmentalist Alanna Smith said researchers knew very little about the deep ocean.

"We'd really be the guinea pigs of this industry, going first in.

"It's a risky, risky move."

A US-backed research expedition in the 1950s was the first to discover the "enormous fields" of polymetallic nodules in the South Pacific.

Waves of Japanese, French, American and Russian ships sailed the Cook Islands in the following decades to map this trove.

But deep-sea mining was largely a fringe idea until around 2018, when the burgeoning electric vehicle industry sent metal prices soaring.

Mining companies are now vying to exploit the world's four major nodule fields -- three in international waters, and the fourth in the Cook Islands.

The International Seabed Authority meets this month to mull rules that could pave the way for mining in international waters.

Although the Cook Islands can mine its territory without the authority's approval, it still has a stake in the decision.

The Cook Islands also own one of 17 contracts to hunt for nodules in the international waters of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, halfway between Mexico and Hawaii.

So far, the Cook Islands has said its approach -- even in its own waters -- would be closely "aligned" with the authority's rules.

But it remains unclear if it will proceed without those regulations.

"We're not setting time frames in terms of when we want to get this started," said Edward Herman, from the Cook Islands' Seabed Minerals Authority.

"I think the time frames will be determined based on what the research and the science and the data tells us."

Many of the Cook Islands' South Pacific neighbours want to see deep-sea mining banned.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a scathing indictment in June, saying the "predatory" industry was environmental "madness".

But the Cook Islands has powerful friends.

It signed an agreement with China earlier this year for the "exploration and research of seabed mineral resources".

"There was a lot of noise," said Herman, referencing the backlash over the China deal.

"And obviously there's a lot of interest... whenever China engages with anyone in the Pacific.

"And we understand, we accept it, and we will continue."

Turkey (AFP) – Deep in the mountains of Turkey's southeastern Hakkari province, bordering Iran and Iraq, Kurdish livestock owners and farmers have gradually returned with their animals after decades of armed conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish army.

"We've been coming here for a long time. Thirty years ago we used to come and go, but then we couldn't come. Now we just started to come again and to bring our animals as we want," said 57-year-old Selahattin Irinc, speaking Kurdish, while gently pressing his hand on a sheep's neck to keep it from moving during shearing.

On July 11 a symbolic weapons destruction ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan marked a major step in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics -- part of a broader effort to end one of the region's longest-running conflicts.

The PKK, listed as a terror group by Turkey and much of the international community, was formed in 1978 by Ankara University students, with the ultimate goal of achieving the Kurds' liberation. It took up arms in 1984.

The conflict has caused 50,000 deaths among civilians and 2,000 among soldiers, according to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Alongside with several other men and women, Irinc practices animal husbandry in the grassy highlands at the foot of the Cilo Mountains and its Resko peak, which stands as the second-highest in the country with an altitude of 4,137 meters (13,572 feet).

A place of scenic beauty, with waterfalls, glacial lakes and trekking routes, Cilo has gradually opened its roads over the past few years to shepherds and tourists alike as the armed conflict with PKK died down on the backdrop of peace negotiations.

But the picturesque mountains had long been the scene of heavy fighting between the Turkish army and PKK fighters who took advantage of the rough terrain to hide and strike. It left the Kurdish farmers often at odds with the army.

"In the past we always had problems with the Turkish soldiers. They accused us of helping PKK fighters by feeding them things like milk and meat from our herd," another Kurdish livestock owner, who asked not to be named, told AFP, rejecting such claims.

"Now it's calmer," he added.

Although the peace process brought more openness and ease to the region, tensions did not vanish overnight.

Checkpoints remain present around the city of Hakkari, and also to the main access point to the trekking path leading to Cilo glacier, a major tourist attraction.

"Life is quite good and it's very beautiful here. Tourists come and stay in the mountains for one or two days with their tents, food, water and so on," said farmer Mahir Irinc.

But the mountains are a hard, demanding environment for those making a living in their imposing shadow, and the 37-year-old thinks his generation might be the last to do animal husbandry far away from the city.

"I don't think a new generation will come after us. We will be happy if it does, but the young people nowadays don't want to raise animals, they just do whatever job is easier," he lamented.

An open truck carrying more than a dozen Kurdish women made its way to another farm in the heart of the mountains, where sheep waited to be fed and milked.

The livestock graze at the foot of the mountains for three to four months, while the weather is warm, before being brought back to the village.

"We all work here. Mothers, sisters, our whole family. Normally I'm preparing for university, but today I was forced to come because my mother is sick," explained 22-year-old Hicran Denis.

"I told my mother: don't do this anymore, because it's so tiring. But when you live in a village, livestock is the only work. There's nothing else," she said.

Phnom Penh (AFP) – The generation of Cambodians who may find themselves in the firing line when the country introduces military conscription is split between quiet pangs of anxiety and proud proclamations of patriotism.

"My family is poor. If I am called in for the service, I am worried that my family might face financial issues," 25-year-old tuk-tuk driver Voeun Dara told AFP in Phnom Penh. "It is worrisome for me."

Citing rising tensions with Thailand, Prime Minister Hun Manet says Cambodia will next year activate a long-dormant law requiring citizens aged 18 to 30 to enlist in the military.

Hun Manet has proposed conscripts serve for two years to bolster the country's 200,000 personnel after a territorial dispute boiled over into a border clash, killing one Cambodian soldier in late May.

Graphic design student Ray Kimhak's brother-in-law, a volunteer soldier, has already been deployed to the countries' 800-kilometre-long (500-mile) border.

But the 21-year-old says he would gladly join him if compelled by conscription.

"He said it was a bit difficult to sleep in the jungle, and it rains a lot. But these difficulties don't discourage me at all," Ray Kimhak told AFP at his university in the capital.

"We are ready to protect our territory because when it is gone, we would never get it back."

Cambodia's conscription law dates back to 2006 but has never been enforced. Hun Manet has said it will be used to replace retiring troops, though it is unclear how many citizens are set to be called up.

The country of 17 million has a long and dark history of forced enlistment.

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communist regime, which ruled from 1975 to 1979, conscripted fighting-aged men, and sometimes children, into its ranks as it perpetrated a genocide that killed two million.

One 64-year-old who was conscripted by the Khmer Rouge at 17 told AFP he supported the government's decision, despite standing on a landmine during his time as a soldier.

"I was forced to be a soldier by Pol Pot," he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity from the Thai border town of Sampov Lun.

"Being a soldier is not easy, but I support the government's plan of military conscription in the face of a border dispute with Thailand. We need to protect our land."

Under the newly activated conscription legislation, those who refuse to serve in wartime would face three years in prison, while peacetime refuseniks would face one year behind bars.

Sipping green tea at a cafe, 18-year-old IT student Oeng Sirayuth says he fully supports Hun Manet's call to arms.

"We should be ready, because tension with our neighbouring country is growing," he said. But personally he hopes for a deferral as he finishes his studies.

"I am a bit reluctant because I have never thought that I will have to join the military service," he said.

"I think 60 percent of young people are ready to join the military, so these people can go first, and those who are not yet ready can enter the service later."

Under the modern-day conscription legislation, women will be allowed to opt for volunteer work rather than military service.

But 23-year-old internet provider saleswoman Leakhena said she stands ready to serve on the frontlines.

Last month her family delivered donations to Cambodian soldiers patrolling the border, where tensions have spiked with Thailand over a disputed area known as the Emerald Triangle.

"We have to do something to protect our nation," said Leakhena, speaking on the condition that only her first name was revealed.

"I feel proud for our soldiers. They are so brave," she added.

Cambodia allocated approximately $739 million for defence in 2025, the largest share of the country's $9.32 billion national budget, according to official figures.

Hun Manet has pledged to "look at increasing" the defence budget as part of reforms to beef up the military.

But one young would-be conscript urged the government to defer its plans as the country recovers its finances from the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Our economy is still struggling," said the 20-year-old fine art student, who asked not to be named.

"We are in the state of developing our country, so if we enforce the law soon we might face some problems for our economy."

Political analyst Ou Virak also said Cambodia's military faces challenges from within as it seeks to win buy-in from a new generation of conscripts.

"Military training, chain of command, and military discipline are all issues that need to be addressed," he told AFP.

"For conscription to work and be generally supported and accepted by the people, trust needs to be earned."

Karachi (AFP) – Ahmed Raza is invisible in the eyes of his government, unable to study or work because, like millions of other Pakistanis, he lacks identification papers.

In the South Asian nation of more than 240 million people, parents generally wait until a child begins school at the age of five to obtain a birth certificate, which is required for enrolment in most parts of Pakistan.

Raza slipped through the cracks until the end of elementary school, but when his middle school requested documentation, his mother had no choice but to withdraw him.

"If I go looking for work, they ask for my ID card. Without it, they refuse to hire me," said the 19-year-old in the megacity of Karachi, the southern economic capital.

He has already been arrested twice for failing to present identification cards when stopped by police at checkpoints.

Raza's mother Maryam Suleman, who is also unregistered, said she "didn't understand the importance of having identity documents".

"I had no idea I would face such difficulties later in life for not being registered," the 55-year-old widow told AFP from the single room she and Raza share.

Pakistan launched biometric identification cards in 2000 and registration is increasingly required in all aspects of formal life, especially in cities.

In 2021, the National Database and Registration Authority estimated that around 45 million people were not registered. They have declined to release updated figures or reply to AFP despites repeated requests.

To register, Raza needs his mother's or uncle's documents -- an expensive and complex process at their age, often requiring a doctor, lawyer or a newspaper notice.

The paperwork, he says, costs up to $165 -- a month and a half's income for the two of them, who earn a living doing housework and odd jobs in a grocery shop.

Locals whisper that registration often requires bribes, and some suggest the black market offers a last resort.

"Our lives could have been different if we had our identity cards," Raza said.

In remote Punjab villages like Rajanpur, UNICEF is trying to prevent people from falling into the same fate as Raza.

They conduct door-to-door registration campaigns, warning parents that undocumented children face higher risks of child labour and forced marriage.

Currently, 58 percent of children under five have no birth certificate, according to government figures.

Registration fees depend on the province, ranging from free, $0.70 to $7 -- still a burden for many Pakistanis, about 45 percent of whom live in poverty.

"Our men have no time or money to go to the council and miss a day's work," said Nazia Hussain, mother of two unregistered children.

The "slow process" often requires multiple trips and there is "no means of transport for a single woman," she said.

Saba, from the same village, is determined to register her three children, starting with convincing her in-laws of its value.

"We don't want our children's future to be like our past. If children go to school, the future will be brighter," said Saba, who goes by just one name.

Campaigns in the village have resulted in an increase of birth registration rates from 6.1 percent in 2018 to 17.7 percent in 2024, according to UNICEF.

This will improve the futures of an entire generation, believes Zahida Manzoor, child protection officer at UNICEF, dispatched to the village.

"If the state doesn't know that a child exists, it can't provide basic services," she said.

"If a child does not have an identity, it means the state has not recognised their existence. The state is not planning for the services that the child will need after birth."

Muhammad Haris and his brothers, who have few interactions with the formal state in their border village in the mountainous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have not registered any of their eight children.

"The government asks for documents for the pilgrimage visa to Mecca," a journey typically made after saving for a lifetime, he told AFP.

For him, this is the only reason worthy of registration.