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The coastal Thai city of Pattaya is preparing to welcome thousands of U.S. military personnel, as the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier, makes a scheduled port stop this week en route back to the United States after a months-long deployment supporting U.S. military operations against Iran in the Middle East. The massive warship passed Singapore over the weekend, with current navigation placing it on track to dock in Thailand’s Chonburi Province, according to confirmation from Thai government authorities. A second U.S. vessel, the destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., will dock at a separate Thai port as part of the same stopover.

Onboard the Abraham Lincoln are more than 5,000 active-duty service members, and Pattaya’s city leadership projects that a large share of the crew will take leave to visit the city’s famed beachfront and tourism districts. Pattaya Mayor Poramet Ngampichet has framed the visit as a rare and much-needed opportunity to revitalize the city’s struggling tourism sector, which has been hit hard by a global drop in international travel spurred by skyrocketing fuel prices linked to ongoing Middle East tensions. For years, Pattaya has worked to reframe its global reputation from a destination known primarily for nightlife to a top family-friendly natural and cultural vacation spot, and city officials see repeated military port calls as a way to solidify its standing as a key international travel hub. Poramet emphasized that the city welcomes future U.S. military stops, whether for training exercises or rest and relaxation for troops heading back to the U.S.

To ensure the visit proceeds smoothly, Thai authorities have put in place a series of rules and security measures. Poramet confirmed after a Monday meeting with U.S. diplomatic and military officials that all visiting service members will be barred from participating in specific recreational activities such as parasailing, as well as from using marijuana. The ban is particularly notable after Thailand legalized medical cannabis in 2022, leading to a rapid expansion of licensed dispensaries across major Thai cities including Pattaya. Local law enforcement has also increased patrols across high-traffic tourist areas, including Pattaya Beach and the iconic Walking Street entertainment district, and the Thai government has issued a formal warning to local businesses against price gouging visiting sailors. City Police Chief Anek Srathongyoo confirmed that any U.S. service member who violates Thai law will face full prosecution under local regulations. The heightened security is designed to prevent incidents that could harm the city’s reputation and discourage future visits.

Local business owners have mixed reactions to the upcoming port call, echoing broader uncertainty about the potential economic impact. Many businesses struggling from the tourism downturn linked to the Iran conflict have openly embraced the visit, with one beachfront bar hanging a large banner reading “Welcome all US military personnel Thank you for your service.” But other local operators are far more cautious. Souvenir shop owner Somkiet Noree, who operates on Walking Street, noted that Pattaya’s tourism sector remains far quieter than pre-tension levels, and while he hopes the visiting troops will boost his sales, he is not counting on a major windfall. Bualuang Ponok, a bar employee on the same street, echoed that skepticism, pointing out that even with 5,000 service members in the area, it remains unclear how many will actually visit the downtown entertainment and shopping districts where small local businesses operate. She noted that past visits saw only a small share of troops venture into the area, leading to little tangible increase in local spending.

The port call comes after an unprecedented deployment for the Abraham Lincoln. Normally based in the Asia-Pacific region, the carrier was relieved of its Middle East duties in early August by the USS George Washington. Its deployment stretched to more than 250 uninterrupted days at sea, marking a new record for U.S. Navy deployments. The extended time at sea sparked widespread public concern over reports of deteriorating crew mental health and critical shortages of essential supplies including food and hygiene products. Former U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed these concerns at the time, telling reporters the deployment was “not nearly long enough.” After completing its stop in Thailand, the Abraham Lincoln will continue its journey home to the United States, according to Thai official statements.

On August 26, a catastrophic glacial outburst flood tore through the high-altitude border region between Nepal and China, wiping out infrastructure, destroying the iconic cross-border Friendship Bridge, and leaving hundreds of people unaccounted for in one of the deadliest natural disasters to hit the Himalayas in recent years. Visual evidence captured through pre- and post-disaster satellite imagery and local CCTV footage has begun to reveal the full scale of the destruction that unfolded in mere minutes.

A few seconds of chilling CCTV footage from Gyirong, the Chinese side of the border crossing, captures the moment disaster struck: what first resembles a dark, foreboding cloud sweeping over the ridgeline behind border buildings rapidly resolves into a churning mass of water, mud, ice, boulders, and rock surging down the valley at deadly speed. The footage is timestamped 10:59:53 local Tibet time, just seven minutes after a glacial collapse triggered the torrent high in the mountains, per Chinese disaster assessments, and less than 10 minutes after Nepal’s immigration system logged its final transaction at the Rasuwagadhi crossing.

In the wake of the surge, large swathes of the border’s built infrastructure simply vanished. Most of the Gyirong border complex was swept clean off the valley floor, while across the international frontier in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, the destruction was equally severe. The Friendship Bridge, the decades-old structural link between the two nations, was torn from its foundations and washed away, alongside Nepal’s entire immigration and customs compound. Timure, the small mountain trading settlement that had grown up around the busy crossing, was left in ruins.

Geographically, this key trans-Himalayan route has long been recognized as a high-risk zone. Ajay Dixit, a leading Kathmandu-based hydrologist, explains that the corridor is a historic travel link between Kathmandu and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, defined by steep gorges, fast-flowing sediment-heavy rivers prone to carrying massive debris downstream, and inherent geological instability that makes flash floods a persistent threat. Today, the crossing remains a vital economic and cultural gateway, traversed daily by Mount Kailash pilgrims, cross-border traders, truck drivers, customs officials, tourists, and local border communities.

In the hours before the flood hit, the crossing was unusually busy. Electronic immigration records from Nepal confirm that 89 foreign and Nepali nationals had cleared exit checks to enter Tibet, while four people had registered for entry into Nepal. That count, however, only captures a fraction of the people present in the border zone. Tika Ram Pokharel, a senior immigration assistant at Rasuwagadhi who was the only office staff member to survive—he had traveled to Kathmandu to take a mandatory work exam that morning—told reporters that between 300 and 400 people were waiting to cross into Tibet, with additional travelers from the Chinese side also in the area.

The full extent of the human toll remains uncertain, weeks after the disaster. India’s foreign ministry confirms that at least 275 Indian nationals are missing across Nepal, with more than 100 of those unaccounted for believed to have been at the Rasuwagadhi crossing when the flood hit. Among the missing are 32 Indian nationals who cleared Nepali exit checks that morning, as well as 77 pilgrims with the Isha Foundation returning from Mount Kailash who were at the Chinese border facility. Four senior Nepali immigration staff, including the head of the Rasuwagadhi office, are also missing; his body was recovered days later far downstream, while the female officer who logged the final immigration transactions remains unaccounted for. Pokharel, who lost 40 to 50 close friends in the disaster, estimates the actual death toll could be far higher than official counts, suggesting between 2,000 and 2,500 people may have been caught in the surge—an estimate that has not been independently verified.

The geologic timeline of the disaster has left many questions about why so many people were trapped. Seismic sensors detected glacial movement above the border just two minutes after the final immigration transaction was logged, at 8:37 a.m. Nepal local time. Researchers confirmed the seismic shift marked the collapse of a section of mountain glacier that triggered the outburst flood. Once travelers cleared Nepali immigration, it took 15 to 20 minutes to walk the 3.5-kilometer stretch from the immigration office at Ghatte Khola Bazar to the Friendship Bridge, meaning most of the 89 people who cleared exit checks that morning would still have been en route when the flood hit. Ghatte Khola itself, which was home to 50 to 60 local houses, hotels, shops, four hydropower facilities, and a bus terminal for Kathmandu-bound travelers, was completely submerged, with floodwaters surging higher than the 100-meter elevation of the immigration office itself.

Personal accounts from families of the missing underscore the suddenness of the disaster. For many pilgrims, the morning began as a routine wait to cross the border. Sudipto Bhattacharya received final updates from his wife Subhrasree Chakraborty, who was traveling with a group of 60 pilgrims: at 7:57 a.m., she sent a photo of her exit stamp, confirming Nepali immigration was complete. At 8:03 a.m., she sent one last message: “We are waiting to enter China.” Communications cut out moments later, and she has not been heard from since.

When Chinese rescue teams reached the devastated Gyirong border area on August 28, they found a landscape of total destruction. “As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but ruins,” one rescuer told Reuters. The disaster comes just 18 months after a separate major flood shut the crossing for nearly six months, which only reopened on January 1 after Chinese engineers constructed a temporary replacement bridge. By June of this year, cross-border traffic had returned to pre-flood levels, with Chinese authorities recording more than 100,000 crossings through Gyirong in the first half of 2026, and Nepali immigration recording 53,742 total arrivals and departures in the 12 months to mid-July.

Beyond the human cost, the disaster has major economic implications for Nepal, which relies heavily on the Rasuwagadhi crossing for trade with China. Posh Kumar Pandey, chairman emeritus of the Kathmandu-based South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment, notes that Rasuwagadhi is one of Nepal’s only two major land trade ports with China, accounting for roughly one-third of Nepal’s total $2.95 billion in annual trade with its northern neighbor. Up to 70 cargo trucks crossed the border daily, carrying Chinese electronics, machinery, vehicles, clothing, and fruit into Nepal, and the route handles an estimated 80% of all of Nepal’s electric vehicle imports from China.

With both Rasuwagadhi destroyed and Nepal’s second major trade crossing at Tatopani temporarily closed by Chinese authorities due to ongoing landslide risks, Nepal is currently left with no active major land trade routes with China. Pandey warns that the disaster exposes the risks of Nepal’s overreliance on a small number of high-risk border corridors. “We have put all eggs here,” he said. “We need to develop an alternative border port.” He added that Nepal should also reconsider its strategy of concentrating dozens of hydropower projects along the same geologically unstable river system.

For the few survivors like Pokharel, the disaster carries a deeply personal weight. He recalled that after the 2025 flood, his colleagues were acutely aware of the ongoing flood risk, often checking the river at night after feeling seismic vibrations and discussing emergency escape routes uphill if another flood struck. “But my friends could not get that chance,” he said. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing in the region, with Chinese helicopters delivering emergency supplies to cut-off areas and recovery teams working to locate missing persons amid the mud and debris.

On Tuesday, disaster management authorities confirmed that the combined death toll from catastrophic flash flooding triggered by a Himalayan glacial collapse has exceeded 1,000 across Nepal and southern Tibet, China, as rescue crews race against time to reach thousands of missing people trapped in cut-off, disaster-ravaged communities. As of the latest official update from Nepal’s national disaster management agency, the country has recorded 987 confirmed fatalities, with another 3,916 people still unaccounted for – a figure that includes 583 foreign nationals. China’s most recent official update, released Sunday, reported 16 confirmed deaths in the Tibetan region affected by the disaster.

The unprecedented disaster unfolded on August 26, originating high in the Himalayan mountain range in a sequence of catastrophic natural events. The crisis began when a glacial formation experienced a full collapse, sending massive volumes of broken ice, displaced rock, and glacial meltwater surging into lower river valleys, which rapidly triggered powerful downstream flash floods that swept through both Nepalese and Tibetan communities. Researchers analyzing satellite imagery of the disaster site have determined that the collapse was tied to the failure of the bedrock supporting the glacial formation. The force of the resulting massive rockfall was powerful enough to be detected as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event by global monitoring networks.

The enormous surge of water and debris pushed into transboundary rivers that flow through Tibetan and Nepalese valleys, causing water levels to skyrocket in a matter of hours. Floodwaters and debris wiped out entire residential structures, public buildings, highway networks, and bridge crossings, leaving entire regions isolated with no overland access for emergency response. To date, Nepalese authorities confirm that more than 11,814 people have been pulled from danger and evacuated, with emergency teams relying heavily on helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft operations to reach stranded communities after landslides and flooding destroyed most overland routes.

The most urgent priority for rescue teams right now is locating roughly 900 missing workers from 12 damaged hydropower development projects across the affected region. Officials estimate that around 500 of these workers may still be trapped inside flooded project tunnels, cut off from outside contact. Footage released by the Nepalese Army shows rescue teams navigating narrow, debris-clogged tunnels, wading through chest-deep muddy floodwater, and climbing over piles of broken rock and rubble in the search for any surviving trapped workers.

Bimal Sharma, a helicopter pilot who has flown continuous rescue missions since the disaster struck, described the profound scale of destruction to Timure, a remote Nepalese border town near the Tibetan boundary that he has flown to for years. “It felt like I was flying over an entirely different landscape,” Sharma said. The pilot added that while he has had little time to speak at length with the survivors he airlifts to safety, their unspoken grief is impossible to miss. “I can see the pain in their eyes. It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

As rescue operations continue, teams are also working to deliver food, clean water, medical care, and emergency shelter to thousands of survivors who remain in isolated regions with damaged or destroyed transportation infrastructure. The disaster has already drawn attention to the growing risks of glacial hazard events in the Himalayas, a region that has accelerated glacial melt and retreat driven by rising global temperatures.

At the Torkham border crossing, dubbed “Zero Point” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the air shimmers with 41-degree Celsius heat that hangs heavy over a sprawling makeshift transit camp of tattered tarpaulin and plastic shelters. Here, one chapter of displacement closes for millions of Afghans, and another, far more uncertain, begins. Among the first to step across the frontier this week was 35-year-old Nazia, who had lived her entire life in Pakistan, where she was born to a displaced Afghan family. Minutes after crossing into a country she had never seen, she carried a faint sense of bittersweet relief: “It feels good to be in my own country,” she said, her two young children clinging to her hands as she walked toward Taliban-run registration counters draped in the movement’s black and white flag. But the relief quickly faded. “Many people here don’t even have enough bread to eat,” she sighed. Nazia is far from alone. Nearly her entire extended family—eight sisters and all their children—have been deported to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran this year alone, part of the largest cross-border population movement on the planet today.

For decades, millions of Afghans fled decades of conflict, invasion, and political upheaval to seek refuge and work in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. After the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021, that outflow accelerated, swelling the population of Afghan migrants in the two neighboring states to more than 8 million combined. But in recent years, both countries have launched sweeping crackdowns targeting undocumented Afghan migrants, and those operations have expanded far beyond unregistered people to include even Afghans with official refugee documentation, the United Nations and human rights organizations confirm. Pakistan has publicly acknowledged that even holders of longstanding Proof of Registration cards are not exempt from deportation, and there is no sign the expulsions will slow.

By the end of August this year, more than 1 million Afghans had already been forcibly repatriated from Pakistan and Iran, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “In a little under three years, we’ve seen six million people return to Afghanistan—That is the size of an entire small country,” said Charlie Goodlake, UNHCR’s Afghanistan spokesperson, speaking from the baking heat of the border transit camp. “We have never documented a return movement of this scale in recent modern history,” he emphasized.

Many returnees have not set foot on Afghan soil for generations. 60-something Sarwar, who crossed the border just days earlier in a convoy of 40 family members packed into a rickety Pakistani lorry along with all their worldly possessions, left Afghanistan during the 1979 Soviet invasion, and all seven of his brothers were born and raised in Pakistan. “We built a life there over 45 years. It’s heartbreaking to be forced out of the home you knew,” he said. Still, like nearly every other returnee the BBC spoke with at the crossing, he shared a small silver lining: “I’m happy to be free of constant harassment by Pakistan’s police.” Every family interviewed by the BBC reported systemic prejudice and arbitrary harassment at the hands of Pakistani authorities. Pakistan’s government has not responded to formal requests for comment from the BBC, but a foreign ministry spokesperson told a recent Islamabad briefing that the government “undertakes necessary measures to prevent any instance of harassment or maltreatment of Afghan nationals. If such incidents occur, they are sporadic and dealt with fully in accordance with the law.”

The crackdown gained new momentum after a major escalation in cross-border fighting between Pakistan and the Taliban-led Afghan government in October 2024. In February 2025, Human Rights Watch documented widespread human rights abuses including door-to-door raids, late-night warrantless home searches, and arbitrary mass arrests. In Iran, which has hosted more than 4 million undocumented Afghans in recent years, mass deportations accelerated sharply after the 12-day 2025 war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran has accused Iranian authorities of leveraging post-war national security tensions to target Afghan migrants, branding many as potential Israeli spies and detaining hundreds on baseless espionage charges.

Both Pakistan and Iran have defended their deportation campaigns, arguing that it is long past time for Afghans to return to their home country. They claim that a portion of Afghan migrants pose domestic security risks, and that the large migrant population places an unsustainable financial strain on national infrastructure and social services. The UN has long maintained that any repatriation of refugees must follow core humanitarian principles: it must be voluntary, safe, and dignified. For the tens of thousands of Afghans now arriving at the border every month, none of those conditions hold.

Inside the sweltering transit tent at Torkham, 40-year-old Zarina—who crossed with her family just days earlier as part of this year’s 1 million returnees—sits huddled with a group of other anxious women and children. She summed up the precarious future that waits for most arrivals: “We have no money to start a business, no way to earn a living, and we don’t even have a tent to put up to call our own.” When asked if she fears for the future of her daughters, who will be barred from secondary school and university under Taliban edicts, she gestured to the cluster of young girls beside her: “Look at them. Of course I’m worried.”

For some returnees, that worry curdles into outright terror. A former Afghan government security guard, who was first deported from Iran then pushed across the border from Pakistan, spoke to the BBC from a safe house hundreds of kilometers from the border, asking to remain anonymous for his protection. “None of us leave the house anymore. My wife and children are too afraid to even go outside,” he said. He rejected the amnesty the Taliban announced immediately after seizing power in 2021, which promised no retaliation against former government officials, security personnel, and civil servants. “I do not trust their amnesty. So many of my former colleagues have been killed,” he said. He had registered his case with the UN for resettlement to a third safe country, but was deported before his application could be processed.

Widespread systemic financial collapse amplifies every other crisis. Deep global cuts to foreign aid have hit Afghanistan particularly hard, as the Taliban government remains locked out of the global financial system by sweeping US and European sanctions tied to terrorism and human rights abuses. While Pakistan recently announced a temporary 16,000-person exemption from deportation for vulnerable Afghans on humanitarian grounds—a move the UN has welcomed—UN and independent sources estimate that as many as 250,000 Afghans currently living in Pakistan remain at severe risk of harm if deported, including thousands of women and girls who face systematic exclusion from education and public life under Taliban rule.

In Kabul, at the walled, tree-lined foreign ministry compound, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi struck a defiant, optimistic tone when asked about the crisis. “There is no doubt we need international support,” he admitted. “The mass return does create pressure right now, but in the long run, this will benefit both the returnees and Afghanistan.” This marks a shift from the early days of Taliban rule, when some officials downplayed the unfolding humanitarian crisis and claimed divine provision would meet the population’s needs. Today, the UN estimates that 21.9 million Afghans—nearly half the country’s entire population—require life-saving humanitarian assistance this year just to survive. UNICEF warned last week that 1 million Afghan children face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.

“No country in the world could handle a crisis of this scale on its own,” Goodlake said, while acknowledging that the Taliban government has taken limited steps to accommodate arriving returnees. But he added a key caveat: “We also know that many of the restrictions and edicts the Taliban has put in place, particularly those limiting the rights of women and girls, make it far harder for us to mobilize the international support this crisis demands.”

Muttaqi has repeatedly defended the Taliban’s restrictive gender policies as internal Afghan affairs that do not require international interference. Those policies have left the Taliban diplomatically isolated: five years after seizing power, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban government. Muttaqi pushed back on that isolation, pointing to deepening economic and diplomatic ties with neighboring powers including China, India, and Central Asian states. When asked about the lack of formal relations with Western nations, he answered with a blunt question of his own: “What have those who refused to engage with us over the past five years achieved?” He answered immediately: “Nothing.”

That same word “nothing” echoes across the Torkham crossing, but in a far grimmer context. Every family arriving at Zero Point carries with them only the few possessions they could pack onto a lorry, and they leave behind the lives they built over decades. For millions, the long-awaited “homecoming” is actually the start of rebuilding everything from scratch—with almost nothing.