British police raided a Quaker meeting house in London on Thursday and arrested six women attending a meeting on climate change and the war in Gaza, according to a statement from Quakers UK.

“No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” said Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, according to the statement.

“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest,” Parker added.

Quakers, a nickname for members of the Religious Society of Friends, follow a religious tradition that originally grew from Protestant Christianity in the 17th century.

Quakers have a long history of supporting protest movements and non-violence is one of their core beliefs.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The first time he flew his cargo plane through the clouds over his hometown of Kabul, Tauheed Khan swelled with pride.

During the US-led, 20-year war against the Taliban, Afghan Air Force pilots played a key role alongside American counterparts, some carrying out strikes that inflicted heavy casualties on the hardline Islamists.

That coalition ended in August 2021, when foreign troops withdrew and Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Khan now finds himself in neighboring Pakistan with his young family, fearing that they could be killed if they return to an Afghanistan now under the grip of the very forces he fought against.

Worsening their plight, anti-migrant policies in both Washington and Islamabad mean time is running out to find a safe alternative, including a looming deadline at the end of this month.

The war, which began with the US invasion in 2001 following the September 11 attacks, devastated Afghanistan’s civilian population, which is still recovering.

The ousting of the Taliban by the US-led coalition led to profound changes, including a return of democracy and significant improvements for Afghanistan’s women. But war and instability raged across swathes of the nation, especially in rural areas.

Tens of thousands were killed. Civilian losses escalated to 5,183 dead in the first six months of 2021, as the US began to pull out from Afghanistan and depend further on the Afghan military. A five-year study published by the United Nations in 2021 showed that 785 children died from US and AAF airstrikes over that period.

As the US finally pulled out, the Afghan army and government collapsed, allowing Taliban fighters to sweep back into power. Afghans affiliated with the former government are “most at risk” from the new Taliban administration, according to a report published by Human Rights Watch.

HRW and the United Nations have documented “extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, and torture and other ill-treatment” of Afghans who were in the security forces.

‘Pilots risk everything’

Khan’s friend, 37-year-old Khapalwaka is equally terrified. A trained aviation engineer, he worked as part of the AAF’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance program. His job involved clearing out civilian areas before they were targeted by US drone strikes.

He said he was assigned the task by his superiors, something he had often protested. “I soon became a target of the local Taliban faction,” said Khapalwaka, who had to move house every “three to four months” for safety reasons, even before Kabul fell.

Now selling wood by the roadside to feed his family, Khapalwaka – who, like Khan, was speaking under a pseudonym – said he’s concerned the Taliban could reach him in Pakistan too. “I know that they have contacts here, that they could target me here if they wanted… I just want to get out of here, so my daughters have a chance to be educated.”

The Afghan Taliban denied that former pilots were at risk if they returned.

The US embassy in Islamabad did not respond to a request to comment.

Left in limbo

Khan sat in a small room of his tiny apartment in a non-descript Islamabad building. Bedspreads shrouded windows as makeshift curtains, but slivers of sunlight poked through, making harsh blotches on the faces of his small children, who slept tucked together in frayed blankets on the floor, oblivious to the sound around them.

The youngest child was awake and constantly jumping on Khan’s lap as he spoke of the life he left behind.

In the chaos that ensued after the US withdrawal, Khan got to Pakistan in March 2022. He arrived legally and on foot, following the advice of a US pilot who had been one of his trainers.

Since then, Khan said, there has been “silence.”

In the past two months, White House policy has moved in a less predictable, more anti-migrant direction under President Donald Trump, throwing into doubt the prospects for Afghans such as Khan.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have already been caught in limbo due to other Trump administration executive orders suspending the US refugee admissions program and the suspension of foreign aid funding for flights of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders. According to #AfghanEvac, at least 2,000 Afghans who had previously been approved to resettle in the US are currently in limbo.

March 31 deadline for Afghans in Pakistan

And the days of Pakistan offering at least relative safety may be numbered.

Home to one of the world’s largest refugee populations – most of them from Afghanistan – Pakistan has not always welcomed the foreigners, subjecting them to hostile living conditions and threatening deportation over the years.

According to the UN refugee agency, more than 3 million Afghan refugees, including registered refugees and more than 800,000 undocumented people, are living in Pakistan.

Islamabad has been cracking down on Afghan refugees since October 2023. It had shown leniency towards Afghans awaiting settlement elsewhere, but that changed after an announcement this February that it would repatriate “Afghan nationals bound for 3rd country resettlement,” by March 31.

That deadline will arrive on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, which ends the holy month of Ramadan. It is a time of celebration, feasting and gift-giving, but for Jawad Ahmed, a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot with the AAF, it feels like “all days are melting into one”.

“I was known in my hometown as someone who worked with the US military and I was a military man myself,” said Ahmed, whose name has also been changed at his request to protect his identity.

He arrived in Pakistan legally and was in limbo for two years. He said he interviewed with US immigration officers in May of 2024 and had his medical interview on January 10 at the US embassy. Since then, like many others including Khan, Ahmad has heard nothing from any US embassy official.

Ahmed spoke of seeing Pakistani police “whisk away” his Afghan neighbors, with an increase in raids over the last two months. His children are “overwhelmed with fear and terror.”

‘Death, difficulties and horrors’

But returning to Afghanistan could be even worse, according to Ahmed. “Only death, difficulties and horrors await us there” he said.

Ahmed’s family in Afghanistan have adopted new names and identities for their safety, eking out a life in a new province.

“Nobody knows about me where they are, nobody knows that they had a son, that they had a brother, in their new world it’s as if I never existed.”

He repeatedly asks for his message to be shared with President Trump and the US government.

“You trained us, we were there for you in a difficult time, we stood shoulder to shoulder with you,” said Ahmed. “We don’t have options in Pakistan, what can we do, please for the love of God get us out of here. We don’t have a life here; we are choking with fear.”

A serving US air force pilot, who asked to remain anonymous, has been assisting Afghan pilots they served alongside.

While serving soldiers have had some success helping families escape to the US, they still “fear for” their Afghan counterparts stuck in Pakistan and other countries and have “anxiety about their current situation and their future,” the pilot said.

Abandoning former partners, according to Vandiver of #AfghanEvac, sends a “chilling message to future US allies – whether in Ukraine, Taiwan, or elsewhere – that partnering with the US is a death sentence once the war ends.”

“China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are going to eat our lunch because of this.”

A spokesperson for the US embassy said it remains in close communication with Pakistan on the status of Afghan nationals seeking resettlement in America.

As Eid approaches, Tauheed Khan and his friendship group of 27 Afghan pilots and engineers stuck in Islamabad, dream of eating meat to end their fast, of access to education for their children, of new clothes, a better home to live in with proper beds and of a way out.

“We are scared we will be dragged out,” says Khan. “We are under too much pressure, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Anxious loved ones waited outside a twisted mass of metal and concrete in the heart of Thailand’s capital on Saturday as rescuers searched for dozens of missing workers and the city confronted the aftermath of a rare and powerful earthquake that set skyscrapers swaying and rattled millions of residents.

Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake struck hundreds of miles away in impoverished Myanmar, but was strong enough to send shock waves through the forest of high-rise condominiums, shopping malls and offices of central Bangkok, sending water spilling from infinity pools and buckling carriages on the city’s rail network.

In Myanmar some 700 people have been confirmed killed so far and more than 1,600 injured, according to the isolated country’s military government, with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimating the final toll there could surpass 10,000 people according to early modeling.

At least 10 people have died in Bangkok, its deputy governor said, sending shock waves of a different kind through a city that sits on no major tectonic fault.

‘I kept calling’

The ground zero of the devastation in the Thai capital is an under-construction 30-story skyscraper next to the sprawling Chatuchak weekend market popular with the millions of foreign tourists that visit the city each year.

Early Saturday the loved ones of those feared buried under the mountain of broken pillars, rubble and steel sat on plastic chairs at the edge of the excavation site, watching diggers claw through the debris.

“I kept calling, but it was unsuccessful. All I kept hearing was the continuous toot… toot… of a busy signal,” she said.

“I feel like there’s a lump in my stomach, and I have no appetite to eat. I’m worried about my mom and sister still being stuck inside since yesterday. Nowhere to be found.”

She said she had spoken to her sister on Friday morning before they left for work.

“I asked her what she would have for lunch,” she recalled.

In a city where deep inequalities are on stark display, many of Bangkok’s construction workers hail from poorer parts of Thailand, especially its less wealthy northeast, as well as from neighboring Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The collapsed structure was being built by a subsidiary of the China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group, itself a subsidiary of the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC), one of the world’s largest construction and engineering contractors, according to a now-deleted social media post by the group.

The Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited was also involved in the project, according to Chinese state media report from 2021.

In a post on its official WeChat account on April 2, 2024, China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group celebrated the completion of the building’s main structure on March 31, 2024.

When completed, the 137-meter building was to serve as the office of Thailand’s State Audit Office and other related government agencies, the company said in the post.

Broken skybridge

Elsewhere across the Southeast Asian megacity, glitzy glass-and-steel buildings home to expensive real estate swayed and groaned when the quake hit, showering dust onto the ground.

A bridge connecting two high-rise apartment buildings in an upmarket neighborhood broke during the quake, video showed.

Other videos showed the contents of rooftop infinity pools – a popular status symbol of Bangkok’s well-heeled – sloshing off the sides of towering apartment blocks onto the street below.

Bangkok has expanded at a breakneck pace, with high-rise condos and gleaming skyscrapers shooting up in recent decades.

When the tremors began, Bella Pawita Sunthornpong thought she was experiencing a moment of lightheadedness, “because I was seeing everything was swaying.”

She grabbed her phone and started running down from the 33rd floor, telling others around her to run too. As she made her way out of the building, she said, ceiling paint was falling and everything was still swaying.

“I was thinking, you know, whatever happened, I just need to keep running until I hit the ground,” Pawita Sunthornpong said.

Engineers were rushing Saturday to assess nearly 1,000 reports of “structural concerns” across the city. Authorities said buildings would be graded – green for safe, yellow for buildings with some damage which are usable with caution, and red indicating severe damage requiring closure.

Fresh misery for war-torn Myanmar

The worst damage has taken place hundreds of miles away across the border in Myanmar, a nation far less well equipped to deal with such a large disaster.

The quake struck near Myanmar’s second most populous city, Mandalay, home to historic temple complexes and palaces.

Reuters video from near Mandalay showed a multi-story building collapsing in on itself as the quake hit, sending around a dozen saffron-robed monks ducking for cover.

The city, home to around 1.5 million people, is normally popular with foreign tourists.

But a civil war has raged across the country since the military took power in 2021, ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and ending a 10-year experiment with democratic rule.

Swathes of the country lie outside the control of the junta and are run by a patchwork of ethnic rebels and militias, making compiling reliable information extremely difficult.

The epicenter was recorded in Sagaing region, which borders Mandalay and has been ravaged by the war, with the junta, pro-military militia and rebel groups battling for control and all running checkpoints, making travel by road or river extremely difficult.

Having largely shut the country off from the world during four years of civil war, Min Aung Hlaing – the leader of Myanmar’s military government – issued an “open invitation to any organizations and nations willing to come and help the people in need within our country,” adding the toll was likely to rise.

Several aid agencies said they are mobilizing ground operations.

But the military – which has ruled Myanmar for most of its history since independence from Britain in 1948 – has a long and troubled track record of struggling to respond to major natural disasters, and in the past has granted humanitarian access, only to rescind it later.