🌍 Pakistan’s deporting millions of refugees and migrants

Hi there Intriguer. A French couple is suing a second-hand dealer for buying an African artefact off them for $160 then reselling it at auction for a cool $4.4M. But in a further plot twist, the row has piqued the interest of Gabon, which is now asking that the rare 19th-century mask be returned home.

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🛂 Pakistan is deporting millions of Afghans. 

• 🇿🇦 South Africa’s power problems somehow just got worse. 

• ➕ Plus: The European family is born, how the papers are covering a spying scandal in India, and world leaders gather at the UK’s artificial intelligence summit.

1. 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: Luxembourg-based steel giant ArcelorMittal has agreed to return its Kazakhstan operations to the government after months of negotiations. A deadly underground coal mine fire last week might have increased pressure to finalise the agreement.  

2. 🇲🇪 Montenegro: A new prime minister took office yesterday (Tuesday), months after Montenegrin voters headed to the polls. Milojko Spajić, the 36-year-old ex-finance minister and Goldman Sachs banker, heads up a coalition of pro-EU and minority parties.

3. 🇹🇭 Thailand: Authorities are moving to impose extra regulations on sugar exports to control the domestic supply and price of the commodity. Thailand is the world’s second-biggest sugar exporter. 

4. 🇻🇪 Venezuela: A top court has suspended the opposition’s primary results, prompting the US to warn Caracas that it could roll back recent sanctions relief. María Corina Machado, recently banned from holding office, won the primary last weekend. 

5. 🇮🇱 Israel: Bolivia announced yesterday it had cut all diplomatic ties with Israel, citing war crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza. The same day, Colombia and Chile recalled their ambassadors to Israel, while Brazil’s president reiterated calls for Israel to “stop!”

🛂 Pakistan | Geopolitics

Why are millions of Afghans fleeing Pakistan?

Vast numbers of undocumented Afghan migrants have fled Pakistan to avoid arrest and forced deportation ahead of a 1 November (today) deadline.  

28 days ago, Pakistan ordered all unregistered migrants (including more than 2 million Afghans) to return to their countries of origin by today.

Some 600,000 Afghans had crossed into Pakistan after the Taliban’s return in 2021, often fearing Taliban rule and its associated reprisals.

Others have lived in Pakistan for decades or were even born there after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with few real ties to Afghanistan.

So the UN has warned that Pakistan is risking a “human rights catastrophe”.

But Pakistan says it’s responding to security concerns, claiming 14 of the 24 suicide bombings since February have been carried out by Afghan nationals. Both the Taliban and the US have denied any role by Afghan refugees.

Intrigue's take: Aside from the stark ethical dimension here, there’s a heady mix of politics and geopolitics at play.

On politics, Pakistan’s caretaker government is meant to be arranging fair elections, but it’s seen as a continuation of the last unpopular administration.

On geopolitics, Pakistan’s erstwhile support for the Taliban has backfired, with the group’s local affiliates fuelling a violent insurgency in Pakistan.

So this mass deportation order partly looks like an attempt to bolster legitimacy at home, while pressuring the Taliban to change its tune abroad.

There’s evidence it’s popular with Pakistanis weary of hosting millions of Afghans, but it’s hard to see the Taliban becoming a better neighbour as a result.

Also worth noting: 

• Pakistan has defended the move as an “exercise of Pakistan’s sovereign domestic laws”, while calling on the world to help.

• There are an additional 1.4 million documented Afghan migrants and refugees who Pakistan says may stay in the country.

📰 How newspapers covered…

Claims that India hacked opposition iPhones

*The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is India’s ruling party.

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🇿🇦 South Africa | Energy

Record losses and blackouts in South Africa

Rolling blackouts are so common in South Africa that the local term used to describe them (load-shedding) was South Africa’s 2022 Word of the Year.

Yesterday (Tuesday), South Africa’s state power utility (Eskom) published its annual performance report, and it’s quite the read. It says the company:

• implemented power cuts on 280 days of the year 

• suffered record losses ($1.27B) for the financial year, and

• saw a “significant deterioration” in emissions performance.

What went wrong? Some of the factors include:

• 🧰 Poor upkeep of the old coal plants that provide 70% of its power

• 💸 Decades of mismanagement and corruption, and

• 🔋 An inability or reluctance to diversify the country’s energy base.

Intrigue’s take: The government has pledged to split the ailing utility into three subsidiaries to make it more efficient, but the crux of the matter is South Africa needs more generation capacity – and that takes years to build.

Also worth noting: 

• Six of South Africa’s 14 coal plants were scheduled (💾) to be decommissioned soon. There are now plans to extend their life.

➕ Extra Intrigue

What we’re reading on AI:

• 3 new ways to check images and sources online

• Biden hails ‘bold action’ of US government with order on safe use of AI

• OpenAI debates when to release its AI-generated image detector

• World leaders are gathering at the U.K.’s AI Summit. Doom is on the agenda

• Trust in Focus: Leica Launches World’s First Camera with Content Credentials

🗳️ Poll time!

📜 Today in history

On this day thirty years ago, the European Union was formally established after the Maastricht Treaty (signed 20 months earlier) came into effect. The bloc has since expanded from 12 original members in 1993 to 27 today.

Yesterday’s poll: Would you buy and eat Japanese seafood?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🐟 Yes, absolutely (51%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🤔 No, I'm not convinced (36%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⛔ I hate seafood (10%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (3%)

Your two cents:

• 🐟 E.D: “Personally I would still eat Japanese seafood and trust the IAEA's review.”

• 🐟 C.L: “A little radiation won't be noticeably worse than the microplastics, heavy metals, pesticides, and other crap we throw in the ocean and gets absorbed into fish. Bring me that yummy, polluted, radioactive sushi.”

• 🤔 B.G: “I would want to know how they are monitoring fish for safety.”

• ⛔ N.K: “As a nuclear engineer, I don't see any reason why their seafood would be any less fit for consumption with Fukushima water in it.”

• ✍️ F.N: “I’m vegan so it’s a non-issue.”