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Osaka, Japan — One of the largest wooden structures ever built is taking shape in Osaka but hopes that Expo 2025 will unite the world are being dogged by cost blowouts and a lack of public enthusiasm. The imposing circular centerpiece will be crowned by a 20-meter-high sloping canopy, designed by top architect Sou Fujimoto, known as the "Grand Roof." It has a circumference of a staggering 2 kilometers and 161 countries and territories will show off their trade opportunities and cultural attractions at pavilions within the vast latticed ring. A crane hoisted a block of beams into place this week as organizers said construction was largely on schedule, one year before visitors will be welcomed. Expo 2025 global PR director Sachiko Yoshimura maintained that global participants would be "united" by the event even though there are conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere. Russia will not be among the participants at Expo 2025, which will run from April 13 to October 13. "Of course, there are so many crises around the world, but we want everybody to actually get together and think about the future and sustainability," Yoshimura said. It has also met a lukewarm response in Japan, where promotion is ramping up and the red-and-blue Expo 2025 mascot "Myaku-Myaku" -- billed by the official website as "a mysterious creature born from the unification of cells and water" -- is ever-present. A recent Kyodo News survey found that 82% of Japanese companies, sponsors and others involved said "fostering domestic momentum" would be a challenge. Ballooning budget The construction budget has ballooned 27% from 2020 estimates to $1.5 billion due to inflation and Japan's chronic worker shortage. Some say the costs are also hard to justify when 6,300 people are still in evacuation centers and hotels after an earthquake on New Year's Day devastated parts of central Japan. Fujimoto's "Grand Roof" alone has a price tag of 35 billion yen and has been slammed by opposition leader Kenta Izumi as "the world's most expensive parasol." The "Grand Roof" and other structures are temporary, with no clear plan for them other than organizers saying they will be reused or recycled. The site on an artificial island in Osaka Bay will be cleared after the Expo, with plans to build a resort there containing Japan's first casino. Jun Takashina, deputy secretary general of the Japan Association for Osaka 2025, acknowledged budget and regulatory "struggles" among foreign participants but said organizers would help make sure the displays are ready in time. Among the most hotly anticipated attractions are flying electric cars, which take off vertically, showcasing the event's technological and environmental aspirations. But the vehicles -- subject to reams of regulations -- will be a "kind of experiment," Yoshimura said. More than 1.2 million tickets have already been sold, and organizers hope to attract 28.2 million visitors, including 3.5 million from abroad. That would be 4 million more than the last World Fair in Dubai but pales in comparison to the 64 million people who attended the 1970 Expo in Osaka, a record until it was overtaken by Shanghai in 2010. Future like science fiction The first world fair to celebrate culture and industrial progress was held in London in 1851, with the Eiffel Tower built for the 1889 Paris World Fair. Osaka academic Shinya Hashizume, a specialist in architecture history and town planning, said he was amazed as a 10-year-old when he saw a "future that looked like science fiction" at the 1970 Expo. The first film in IMAX format was shown at that event and visitors could admire rocks brought back from the moon. "Those six months were extraordinary for Osaka. Simply put, the whole town was having a party," he said. The advent of mass tourism and hyper-connected societies may have since lessened the attraction, but some Osaka residents still think it's a good idea. Kosuke Ito, a 36-year-old doctor, said it would "strengthen the economy." However, Yuka Nakamura, 26, said she might be put off by adult entry fees ranging from $25 to $50 a day.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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Port Sudan, Sudan — Millions displaced and on the brink of famine. Sexual and ethnic violence. Infrastructure destroyed. Aid workers say a year of war between rival generals in Sudan has led to catastrophe, but the world has turned away. The northeast African country is experiencing "one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory" and "the largest internal displacement crisis in the world," the United Nations says. It is also on track to become "the world's worst hunger crisis." Aid workers have called it the "forgotten war" affecting a country of 48 million -- more than half of whom they say need humanitarian assistance. "People have been killed and raped and assaulted and detained and beaten and taken away for months at a time. We're used to it," said Mahmud Mokhtar, who helped provide volunteer social services in the Khartoum area during the war before finally fleeing to Cairo. Experts see no end in sight to the fighting, which began on April 15 last year between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, thousands of people have been killed, including up to 15,000 in one West Darfur town alone, according to U.N. experts. More than 8.5 million have had to flee their homes to seek safety elsewhere in Sudan or across borders in neighboring countries. The war "is brutal, devastating and shows no signs of coming to an end," said veteran Sudan expert Alex de Waal. But even if the violence stops now, "the state has collapsed, and the path to rebuilding it is long and fraught," de Waal said. Before the bombing and pillaging began, Sudan was already one of the world's poorest countries. Yet the U.N. says that by January, its humanitarian response scheme had only been 3.1% funded and can barely reach one of every 10 people in need. 'Milestone of shame' "Before the start of the war, there were dozens of international organizations responding across the country," according to Christos Christou, international president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). "Now, there are almost none." The health system has all but collapsed, and most agricultural land -- the leading employer and once touted as a model for African development -- is out of commission, researchers have said. Gibril Ibrahim, finance minister in the army-aligned government, said in early March that Sudan had lost "80% of its income." Days later, the situation became even more precarious when the energy minister declared force majeure over a "major rupture" on an oil pipeline. Oil exports, via neighboring South Sudan, account for tens of millions of dollars in earnings each month. For desperate civilians, virtually all that remains is mutual aid: volunteers organizing soup kitchens, evacuation plans and emergency health care. "The world continues to look the other way," said Will Carter, Sudan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which alongside MSF is one of the few humanitarian organizations still operating there. The war's anniversary is "a milestone of shame," he said, charging that the international community "has allowed this catastrophe to worsen." On the ground, the RSF now controls most of the capital and the western Darfur region. The paramilitaries descended from the feared Janjaweed militia, unleashed by former strongman Omar al-Bashir's government to quash an ethnic rebellion. The International Criminal Court (ICC) charged Bashir with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes dating from 2003, but Sudanese authorities never handed him over following his overthrow in 2019 after mass protests. 'Pure evil' During the current war, government forces have used their air power to bomb targets on the ground but failed to gain back much territory and have been blamed for striking civilians. "A final victory is out of the question," said a former army officer, requesting anonymity to speak freely. Sudanese analyst Mohammed Latif agreed, telling AFP a win "is impossible" at this point for either side. "Their troops are tired and their supplies drained," Latif said. There has, however, been no shortage of abuses against civilians, rights groups say. "What is happening is verging on pure evil," Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said earlier in the war. Most recently, the army has taken over homes in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, according to a pro-democracy lawyers' committee, after similar seizures by the RSF earlier in the fighting. The lawyers' committee, like other volunteer groups across Sudan, has spent the past year painstakingly documenting violations including summary killings, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and the forced conscription of children. The ICC, currently investigating ethnic-based killings primarily by the RSF in Darfur, says it has "grounds to believe" both sides are committing atrocities. International mediation efforts yielded only truce announcements that were quickly violated. A U.N. Security Council call last month for a cease-fire also failed to end the war, as did Western sanctions. The war is "a vortex of transnational conflicts and global rivalries that threaten to set a wider region aflame," said de Waal. Both sides have sought regional support, experts say, and the United Arab Emirates has been painted as the RSF's main foreign backer, though its leaders deny it. Washington has signaled talks could restart around April 18, but army-aligned prosecutors have since moved against civilian leaders the international community had looked to as potential partners. Still, according to de Waal, "it should not be difficult to reach a consensus across Africa and the Middle East that state collapse is in no one's interest." Against those complex realities, Amer Sohaiel, a displaced man taking shelter in Darfur's Abu Shouk camp, has a simple hope, "that God will help us achieve peace this year."

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina's highest criminal court reported a new development Thursday in the elusive quest for justice in the country's deadliest attack in history — the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center headquarters — concluding Iran had planned the attack and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group had executed the plans. In a ruling obtained by The Associated Press, Argentina's Court of Cassation deemed Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, responsible for the bombing in Buenos Aires that leveled the community center, killing 85 people, wounding 300 and devastating Latin America's biggest Jewish community. The court said the attack came in retaliation for Argentina reneging on a nuclear cooperation deal with Tehran. Alleging Iran's "political and strategic" role in the bombing, the Argentine court paved the way for victims' families to bring lawsuits against the Islamic Republic. In the past three decades, Iran has not turned over citizens convicted in Argentina. Interpol arrest warrants have led nowhere. "The significance of these grave human rights violations for the international community as a whole invokes a state's duty to provide judicial protection," the ruling said, declaring the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association community center a "crime against humanity." The court decision came as no shock. Argentina's judiciary has long maintained Iran was behind the attack, chilling relations between the countries — particularly after the collapse of a joint investigation. Iran has denied involvement. A spokesperson for Hezbollah, Israel's archenemy on its northern border, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. What some said they found shocking, rather, was the court's failure to provide concrete evidence of Iran's direct involvement or shed new light on the case after 30 years of setbacks and scandals. "I would never rule Iran out, it's certainly on the list of suspects, but let's do something specific to rule it in," said Joe Goldman, who co-authored a book about the winding investigations into the Jewish community center attack as well as bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed more than 20 people in 1992. "That would be a serious investigation that we haven't seen." The court singled out top Iranian officials and paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commanders in its determination that Iran carried out the bombings in response to Argentina scrapping three contracts that would have provided Tehran with nuclear technology in the mid-1980s. Its conclusions were based on confidential intelligence reports. Past inquiries into the bombings have turned up indictments, not just against Iranian officials but also two former Argentine presidents. In 2015, the chief prosecutor in the case was mysteriously found dead in his bathroom the day before he was to go public with claims that top Argentine officials had conspired with Iran to cover up responsibility for the bombing. Over the years, witnesses have been threatened and bribed. On Thursday, the Court of Cassation reduced by two years the six-year sentence of an Argentine judge accused of paying a witness $400,000, and upheld other sentences against former prosecutors. Thursday's ruling comes just months ahead of the event's 30th anniversary. Even as the case has stalled for years, Argentine authorities have timed big announcements to coincide with anniversaries of the bloody attack. When marking 25 years since the attack, Argentina designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization and froze the group's financial assets. Representatives from Argentina's Jewish community, home to some 230,000 Jews, praised Thursday's court ruling as "historic, unique in Argentina." "It's politically opportune," added Jorge Knoblovits, the president of Argentina's umbrella Jewish organization, pointing to renewed scrutiny of Iran's support for militant groups following Hamas' devastating October 7 attack on Israel. But for the relatives of those killed in the bombings, the ruling was just a grim reminder of their anguish as the case remains open. "We hope one day complete justice and truth will come," said Memoria Activa, an association of families of victims of the attack. "And that these judges will stop profiting from our dead." 

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Twenty years ago this month, photos of abused prisoners and smiling U.S. soldiers guarding them at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were released, shocking the world. Now, three survivors of Abu Ghraib will finally get their day in U.S. court against the military contractor they hold responsible for their mistreatment. The trial is scheduled to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, and it will be the first time that Abu Ghraib survivors are able to bring their claims of torture to a U.S. jury, said Baher Azmy, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. The defendant in the civil suit, CACI, supplied the interrogators who worked at the prison. The Virginia-based contractor denies any wrongdoing and has emphasized throughout 16 years of litigation that its employees are not alleged to have inflicted any abuse on any of the plaintiffs in the case. The plaintiffs, though, seek to hold CACI responsible for setting the conditions that resulted in the torture they endured, citing evidence in government investigations that CACI contractors instructed military police to "soften up" detainees for their interrogations. Retired Army Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, is among those expected to testify. His inquiry concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for instructing military police to set conditions that amounted to physical abuse. There is little dispute that the abuse was horrific. The photos released in 2004 showed naked prisoners stacked into pyramids or dragged by leashes. Some photos had a soldier smiling and giving a thumbs up while posing next to a corpse, or detainees being threatened with dogs, or hooded and attached to electrical wires. The plaintiffs cannot be clearly identified in any of the infamous images, but their descriptions of mistreatment are unnerving. Suhail Al Shimari has described sexual assaults and beatings during his two months at the prison. He was also electrically shocked and dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. Former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili said he was subjected to stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. He was also deprived of sleep, forced to wear women's underwear and threatened with dogs. CACI, though, has said the U.S. military is the institution that bears responsibility for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib and that its employees weren't in a position to be giving orders to soldiers. In court papers, lawyers for the contractor group have said the "entire case is nothing more than an attempt to impose liability on CACI PT because its personnel worked in a war zone prison with a climate of activity that reeks of something foul. The law, however, does not recognize guilt by association with Abu Ghraib." The case has bounced through the courts since 2008, and CACI has tried roughly 20 times to have it tossed out of court. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 ultimately turned back CACI's appeal efforts and sent the case back to district court for trial. In one of CACI's appeal arguments, the company contended that the U.S. enjoys sovereign immunity against the torture claims, and that CACI enjoys derivative immunity as a contractor doing the government's bidding. But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in a first-of-its kind ruling, determined that the U.S. government can't claim immunity when it comes to allegations that violate established international norms, like torturing prisoners, so CACI as a result can't claim any derivative immunity. Jurors next week are also expected to hear testimony from some of the soldiers who were convicted in military court of directly inflicting the abuse. Ivan Frederick, a former staff sergeant who was sentenced to more than eight years of confinement after a court-martial conviction on charges including assault, indecent acts and dereliction of duty, has provided deposition testimony that is expected to be played for the jury because he has refused to attend the trial voluntarily. The two sides have differed on whether his testimony establishes that soldiers were working under the direction of CACI interrogators. The U.S. government may present a wild card in the trial, which is scheduled to last two weeks. Both the plaintiffs and CACI have complained that their cases have been hampered by government assertions that some evidence, if made public, would divulge state secrets that would harm national security. Government lawyers will be at the trial ready to object if witnesses stray into territory they deem to be a state secret, they said at a pretrial hearing April 5. Judge Brinkema, who has overseen complex national security cases many times, warned the government that if it asserts such a privilege at trial, "it better be a genuine state secret." Jason Lynch, a government lawyer, assured her, "We're trying to stay out of the way as much as we possibly can." Of the three plaintiffs, only Al-Ejaili, who now lives in Sweden, is expected to testify in person. The other two will testify remotely from Iraq. Brinkema has ruled that the reasons they were sent to Abu Ghraib are irrelevant and won't be given to jurors. All three were released after periods of detention ranging from two months to a year without ever being charged with a crime, according to court papers. "Even if they were terrorists, it doesn't excuse the conduct that's alleged here," she said at the April 5 hearing.

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Israel is keeping up its war in Gaza but is also preparing for scenarios in other areas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, amid concern that Iran was preparing to strike Israel in response for the killing of senior Iranian commanders. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday denied his sons that were killed in an Israeli strike this week were fighters for the group. He said "the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything." Has the conflict reached an inflection point? VOA's Lori Lundin put the question to Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Russian missiles and drones destroyed a large electricity plant near Kyiv on Thursday. And using microrobots to battle cancer and other diseases.

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President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday, aiming to send a clear message to Beijing that it must stop behaving aggressively against its South China Sea neighbors. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.

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washington — Plans by the Taliban to block access to Facebook are a further attempt to curtail freedom of speech and silence critics in Afghanistan, according to journalists and activists. The proposal was announced by the Taliban’s acting minister of telecommunication and information technologies, Najibullah Haqqani. In an interview with TOLO News, Haqqani said his ministry was preparing a policy “either to restrict or block” access to Facebook in Afghanistan. Haqqani said that blocking the social media platform was “in the interest of the nation.” He added that because Afghan youth are too uneducated to use Facebook in a “positive way,” using it “is a waste of time and money.” Afghan journalists and activists, however, see the proposal as an attempt to further curtail free expression and media freedoms. The proposed policy is a continuation of the Taliban’s “repressive restrictions,” said one Kabul-based journalist, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. The journalist said that “by blocking Facebook, they [the Taliban] want to limit journalists from sharing news and information and silence activists and [government] critics.” The journalist said that restrictions on social media would have negative impact. With news already being censored across the country, many people turn to Facebook for information, he said. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom group, said in a statement said that the Taliban’s plan “would further impede the free flow of information in the country.” According to Statista, an online statistics database, Afghanistan has 3.15 million active social media users, and Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, social media platforms have been increasingly used by journalists and others to share information. Facebook also fills a gap left by the closure of hundreds of news outlets. Since 2021, hundreds of media outlets have closed, said media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, and the Taliban have imposed repressive restrictions on independent media in the country.   These include bans on transborder media, including VOA, its sister network RFE/RL and the BBC. The Taliban also issued media directives and ordered news outlets and journalists to coordinate with officials when preparing content and reporting on events. But can the Taliban block social media? It is technically possible to restrict or block Facebook, said Pervaiz Dostiyar, an information technology specialist, adding that the platform is banned in China and Iran. “But it is difficult to ban Facebook since there are always ways to access the platform, such as using VPN,” or virtual private network, he added. The Taliban have had a wide presence on some social media platforms, including X and WhatsApp. Hamid Obaidi, a former journalism lecturer at Kabul University and the head of the Afghanistan Journalists Support Organization, told VOA that the Taliban have been using social media as the main channel for their “propaganda,” but now they want to restrict it for others. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has cracked down on the Taliban’s accounts. Agence France-Presse earlier reported how Meta closed accounts labeled “Taliban” or “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” and two of its state-run media groups. Meta said it was acting to comply with U.S. law that lists the Taliban as a “terrorist organization.” Those fighting to protect rights in Afghanistan also rely heavily on the platforms. “Activists use social media in their struggle against the Taliban. They are trying to curtail the protests against them,” said Obaidi, who is now in Germany. Rahela Kaveer, an Afghan women’s rights activist in the U.S., told VOA that the Taliban’s proposal shows that the group is afraid of any information being shared. “They want to silence voices raised against their crime that they committed against women in Afghanistan,” she said. The rights organization Human Rights Watch has found that the Taliban “systematically violated the rights of women and girls” in Afghanistan. Women are barred from secondary and university education, work and traveling long distances without a close male relative, and are even blocked from going to public parks and gyms. Since the Taliban takeover, female activists have protested the repressive measures, often using social media to convey their message to the Afghan and international communities. “They do not want the people and the world to know about the women’s situation in Afghanistan,” Kaveer said. No further details have been provided about the proposed Facebook ban, and it is not clear when it will be reviewed or enacted. Ehsanullah Aruobzai and Lina Rozbih from VOA's Afghan Service contributed to this report. This article originated in VOA's Afghan Service. 

As the Biden administration and the US Senate look to the US House to take up a bill for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, experts say U.S. allies are not the only ones in need of the funding boost. As VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports, some say the US defense industry desperately needs the boost as well. Camera: Mary Cielak

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hasaka, syria — Palestine Street, in the heart of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka, resembles a typical scene in a conflict-ridden part of the Middle East: a crowded market with customers walking through dust-covered stores while the cries of street vendors give a bustling vibe to the place. Nothing out of the ordinary. But being the curious reporter that I am, I couldn’t help noticing something odd. Most stores on the right side of the street have painted Syrian flags on their rolling doors. Stores on the other side, however, don't have such signs — or any other signs, for that matter. A relative who owns a fabrics store on the street noticed my perplexed look. “I know it’s very strange,” he told me. “That’s because all stores on the right side of the street are under the control of the Syrian government. Those on the left side fall under the control of the Autonomous Administration.” The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) was established in 2014, nearly two years after the Kurdish-majority region came under the control of Kurdish forces. This was after a rapid withdrawal of Syrian government forces who were deployed to fight rebel forces elsewhere in the early days of the Syrian civil war. In the years since, major military gains made by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, particularly against the Islamic State (IS) terror group, have led to the creation of an expanded Kurdish-controlled authority in northeast Syria. With the support of a U.S.-led global coalition against IS, the SDF now controls about one-third of Syria’s territory, making it the second-largest entity in the country after the Syrian government-controlled areas. The Kurdish-led AANES established a governing system that is separate from that of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Its rules and regulations are enforced by an expansive security apparatus that includes traffic police, general security forces, anti-terror units and other agencies, some of which were trained by the United States and other Western countries. But the aspects of control and governance here are not straightforward. And the situation of Hasaka's Palestine Street offers a glimpse into the very complex and delicate power dynamics in this part of Syria. “Taxes from store owners on this street are collected by two different tax authorities, depending on what side of the street your store is,” said the owner of an electronics store on the Kurdish-controlled side of Palestine Street, a name given to the street by the ruling Baath Party as a sign of support for the Palestinians. The Syrian government and AANES have different holiday calendars, and respective observances are manifested on this street. “When there is a holiday observed by the Autonomous Administration, all stores on our side close their doors, while the others on that side remain open, and vice versa,” the store owner said, pointing to the Syrian-controlled side across the street. There are only a few steps between a Syrian government-manned checkpoint and its Kurdish counterpart, distinguished by the different uniforms worn by the soldiers on each side. The narrow kilometer-long street leads to what is known as the Security Square, a small pocket that is one of the last areas under the control of government forces in Hasaka. The rest of the city is controlled by Kurdish forces. Not far from the city center is a major U.S. military outpost, one of several military installations established by the United States as part of its anti-IS partnership with the SDF. The U.S. has about 900 troops stationed throughout northeast Syria. They have been instrumental in assisting and advising local Kurdish forces in the fight against IS remnants. But the U.S. is not the only foreign power that has soldiers on the ground here. In the government-controlled pocket in Hasaka and several other areas, Russia, a strong backer of Assad’s government, has established a foothold. Most of Moscow’s troops were deployed to the region in 2019 following a partial U.S. troop withdrawal that led to a Turkish invasion of parts of northeast Syria. Turkey, which considers the SDF a terrorist organization, has a significant presence in the region after several ground operations against the Kurdish forces. The presence of so many foreign and local forces, most of whom have been vying for control of this region, has forced local Kurdish authorities to strike a balance, particularly with Syrian government forces, to keep the peace in a country otherwise embroiled in conflict. Palestine Street represents an uneasy political detente between a nascent governing entity that seeks to thrive against all odds and a weakened central government trying to reestablish a bygone authority. It is also a tangible reminder of Syria’s decadelong conflict that is yet to be settled. This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.

islamabad — Pakistan has banned the activities of an Iran-backed Shiite militant group allegedly involved in recruiting and sending young Pakistanis to fight in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime. An Interior Ministry directive, seen Thursday by VOA, identified the proscribed outfit as the Zaynabiyoun Brigade, saying it "is engaged in certain activities which are prejudicial to the peace and security" of Pakistan. It did not elaborate. A ministry official, who spoke to VOA anonymously because he was not authorized to interact publicly with the media, confirmed the authenticity of the March 29 order and placement of the Zaynabiyoun Brigade on a government list of 79 proscribed organizations. The United States designated the Zaynabiyoun Brigade as a terrorist organization in 2019, saying it is composed of Pakistani nationals and provides "materiel support" to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The group has reportedly been mobilizing fighters in Pakistan and among Pakistani refugees in Iran, with the IRGC training them for operations in the Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011. In January this year, the counterterrorism department in Pakistan's southern Sindh province reported that it had arrested a suspected member of the Zaynabiyoun Brigade, saying the man had played a role in an assassination attempt on a prominent cleric. The 2019 attack on Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani in the provincial capital of Karachi killed two of his security guards and wounded a fellow religious scholar but the cleric narrowly escaped, unhurt. Pakistan officials say Pakistani nationals trained to fight in Syria have been returning home and pose a security threat in a country with a history of deadly rivalry between extremists from the majority Sunni Muslim population and the minority Shiite community. The sectarian violence has killed thousands of people over the years but lately has subsided. Islamabad's listing of the Tehran-backed militant group comes amid border tensions stemming from mutual allegations of terrorism. In early January, Iranian security forces carried out drone and missile strikes inside Pakistan against what they said were sanctuaries for anti-Iran militants. Pakistani forces retaliated with similar strikes inside Iran against what they said were bases of fugitive insurgents. Separately on Thursday, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, held a telephone conversation. Zardari's office said in a statement that the leaders discussed, among other issues, security cooperation. Zardari “underlined the need to enhance the exchange of information to overcome the security challenges being faced by the two countries," the statement said. The countries share a 900-kilometer border and routinely accuse each other of supporting or not doing enough to stop cross-border militant infiltration. Fatemiyoun Division The IRGC is also believed to have formed a militia comprising nationals from neighboring Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran. The militia, called the Fatemiyoun Division, has been designated as a terrorist group by Washington. "The Fatemiyoun Division … preys on the millions of undocumented Afghan migrants and refugees in Iran, coercing them to fight in Syria under threat of arrest or deportation," the U.S. Treasury Department said while announcing the group's designation along with the Zaynabiyoun Brigade in 2019. "Treasury's targeting of Iran-backed militias and other foreign proxies is part of our ongoing pressure campaign to shut down the illicit networks the [Iranian] regime uses to export terrorism and unrest across the globe," the U.S. statement said.