Pakistan government charity launches ‘largest’ Ramadan relief campaign to provide 5 million iftar meals

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) on Monday confirmed the national squad will participate in the upcoming AFC Asian Cup qualifiers, scheduled to be held later this month, hours after FIFA lifted its international suspension against the South Asian country. 

FIFA hit Pakistan on Feb. 6 with a third international suspension in less than eight years after the federation rejected its electoral reforms. Following the suspension, the PFF unanimously approved FIFA’s proposed constitutional amendments in an extraordinary meeting in Lahore last Thursday. 

The lifting of the suspension will enable Pakistan to take part in the AFC Asian Cup. The green shirts will kick off their AFC Asian Cup 2027 qualifying campaign with an away match against Syria on March 25. The match will be played in Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.

“Stephen Constantine, who previously served as the national team’s head coach from late 2023 until mid-2024 has been reappointed as the Head Coach for the match against Syria,” the PFF said. 

The AFC Asian Cup qualifiers will be played on a home-and-away basis, with Pakistan placed in Group E alongside Syria, Afghanistan and Myanmar.

PAKISTAN’S FIFA SUSPENSIONS

The PFF has been mired in crisis and controversy since 2015 and this was the third time since 2017 that Pakistan has been suspended.
In June 2022, FIFA lifted the PFF’s suspension, which had been imposed due to undue third-party interference a year earlier. A group of officials led by Ashfaq Hussain Shah, which was elected by the Supreme Court in 2018 to run the PFF but was not recognized by FIFA, took over the headquarters in March 20121. 
They had seized control from FIFA’s normalization committee headed by Haroon Malik. The committee had not conducted elections for the body in the 18 months since it took charge.
FIFA suspended the PFF due to the “hostile takeover” but lifted the ban after confirmation the committee had regained full control of the PFF’s premises and was in a position to manage its finances.
Pakistan was also suspended by FIFA for third party interference in 2017.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s troubled history with animal welfare is once more in the spotlight as a prominent animal rescue organization has called for donations to help care for dozens of exotic monkeys illegally trafficked to Karachi, saying it was temporarily holding the creatures while making arrangements to house them permanently.

The Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation announced last week customs officials had called the non-profit for help to care for dozens of capuchins and marmoset monkeys they had seized at Karachi airport from a man who had “sneakily” imported them by forging documents.

Capuchin monkeys and marmosets have been known to show fear behaviors in response to the loud call from a primate species unknown to them, and ACF said the animals were traumatized after being brought to Pakistan in small “coffin-like carriers” without any access to light. The charity also said they were starving.

“We urgently need your help for the bigger enclosure while we finalize where we are going to be sending them permanently,” said ACF, which has built a small temporary enclosure for the animals. “However, quarantine is four months anyway, and they are under treatment so they need a bigger place to be rehabilitated and quarantined where they can just relax some more and run around.”

A video shared by ACF on Monday showed the monkeys enjoying a platter of fruit.

“They all have got the rabies vaccinations and some of them are not well with multiple issues. But the joy on their face when they see the fruit platter for the first time is priceless,” the charity said. 

Founded in 2013, ACF says it rescues up to 40 abused animals daily and manages a sanctuary for 1,800 animals. 

A welfare organization said last week a black bear was rescued by local authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province and shifted to Islamabad. The seven-year-old black bear called Rocky had been kept illegally in Punjab province and abused in 35 fights, the welfare organization said.

Last December, an elephant died at a safari park less than two weeks after being reunited with her sister, the latest tragedy to affect elephants in captivity in Pakistan.

In 2020, a pair of sick and badly neglected dancing Himalayan brown bears left a notorious zoo in Islamabad for a sanctuary in Jordan.

Kaavan became known as the “world’s loneliest elephant” because he spent many years alone in a Pakistani zoo. In 2020, he was moved to a sanctuary in Cambodia.