In 2024, I wrote here about the Western media’s role in protecting Israel’s narrative — the different standards applied to Israeli and Palestinian victims, the lavish attention paid to Israeli suffering, the reduction of Palestinian deaths to statistics. Much of that criticism was dismissed as partisan. But what happens when audiences stop waiting for the media to tell them what they are seeing?

Palestinians in Gaza have spent three years documenting their own destruction on their phones. Palestinian journalists have kept reporting through the same bombardment, hunger and displacement they cover. They have paid for it with their lives. The Committee to Protect Journalists says Israeli forces have killed 191 Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza. Foreign reporters, meanwhile, have been kept out. The result is an inversion of the old media hierarchy.

For decades, Palestinians were spoken about rather than listened to. Their suffering was filtered through Israeli statements, Western correspondents and government briefings. Today, despite censorship and an enormous imbalance of power, they speak directly to the world. And the world is listening.

What is Israel afraid the world will see?

This matters because Israel’s most powerful argument after Oct 7 was not simply that it had been attacked. It was that everything it did next had to be viewed through the lens of victimhood. Hamas was condemned for murdering civilians and taking hostages. ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ became the entry ticket to any Western conversation about Palestinian suffering. Condemnation was the toll everyone had to pay before they were allowed to mention Gaza. How often were Israeli officials asked to condemn anything before they spoke?

Three years on, that formula has collapsed. You can condemn the killing of Israeli civilians and ask why Palestinian children have been killed in such numbers. You can oppose Hamas and oppose the occupation. These positions were never contradictory. Israel needed them to seem so. Its reputation is no longer being challenged only by activists, Arabs or Muslims. A 2026 Pew Research Centre survey across 36 countries found a median 67 per cent of respondents viewed Israel unfavourably, against 25pc who viewed it favourably. In the US, Israel’s most important ally, 60pc now hold an unfavourable view, up from 53pc a year ago. This is not the work of a marginal activist class.

In 2024, I also wrote that younger audiences were abandoning legacy media for social media, podcasts and YouTube because they no longer trusted it to tell the story of Gaza honestly. That alternative ecosystem has only grown. The irony is that Israel’s attempts to control the story have destroyed its credibility. When foreign journalists cannot enter Gaza, when the journalists already there keep dying, and when Palestinians become the only witnesses to their own destruction, the absence of independent access becomes the story. What is Israel afraid the world will see? Israel can insist the world is being fed misinformation. It can call its critics antisemitic. It can say Hamas is resp­onsible for civilian deaths because it hides among civilians. But repetition is not proof.

That is the difference between Oct 7, 2023, and Oct 7, 2026. Three years ago, Israel’s trauma was the story. Today, the question is what Israel did with the world’s sympathy. The answer is being judged not by Israeli officials or their allies, but by audiences who have watched Gaza destroyed in real time. Israel still has enormous military power, diplomatic protection and powerful friends. But it has lost something no press conference or invocation of Oct 7 can restore: the assumption that its version of events will be believed.

For Palestinians, this is not victory. Their homes are not rebuilt because opinion has shifted. Their dead do not return because the media is finally paying attention. Recognition does not end an occupation. Families still shelter in tents among the ruins. Israeli strikes continue, ceasefire or not. Sympathy has never stopped a bomb. But the story is no longer Israel’s alone to tell. Three years after Oct 7, that is the real story.

The writer is a journalist and conducts writing workshops in Karachi.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

The ‘ease’ in writing about Mao is the abundance of information about him at every stage of his life. He wanted to go to school, but his martinet father wanted help with farm work. One day, he turned up at a school, but the security guard didn’t let him in because of Mao’s age and grown-up physique. Mao nevertheless made his way in, even though most students were bewildered by his presence amongst them.

One key factor in Mao’s personal life was tragedy, which included the murder of his family members. Among them was his 29-year-old second wife,Yang Kaihui, the mother of their sons Anying, Anqing and Anlong. She was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and faced a firing squad.

A brother, Mao Zemin, was tortured and executed. His youngest brother, Mao Zetan, was a talented man. He didn’t go on the Long March, and, instead, chose to organise guerrilla warfare against the government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. He fell while fighting. Also captured and killed was Mao Zejian, Mao’s adopted sister. Similarly, Mao Chuxiong, the son of Mao Zetan, was murdered and buried secretly.

A lot of Mao’s peculiarities deserve to be noted.

Other than what scholars write about one of the modern era’s great men, a lot of peculiarities about Mao deserve to be noted. For instance, during the historic Long March, he ordered that a word should be displayed or scrawled on the back of everyone, so that the person following him should learn it. It was his way of emphasising the importance of literacy.

The Long March was truly a long march across 10,000 kilometres of plains, mountains and rivers. Those taking part consisted of three armies avoiding a clash with Chiang’s forces. It took them one year (1934-35) to reach Yanan in north-western China. The march began with around nearly 86,000 people, but less than 10,000 reached Yanan; the rest dying from hunger, illness, and exhaustion.

Among the prominent people in the Long March were Zhou Enlai, who later became China’s foreign minister and premier, and Zhu De, who was among the founders of the Red Army and helped overthrow China’s last imperial government.

Some 13 years after reaching Yanan, Mao Zedong felt strong enough to take Beijing, where he officially announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Oct 1, 1949. He had entered Beijing on Jan 31, 1949 triumphantly and peacefully, because the Kuomintang’s (KMT) commanding officer, Gen Fu Zuoyi, had agreed to lay down arms. Thus, China’s capital city fell peacefully to Mao after a war that had killed an estimated 4.9 million people.

As the virtual emperor of the world’s greatest country population-wise, Mao was keen to meet another ‘emperor’, who was the head of state of the globe’s biggest country territorially — Joseph Stalin.

Details of their first meeting in Moscow on Dec 16, 1949, show a lack of warmth and hospitality on Stalin’s part. The Chinese guests were made to stay at places that were beneath the dignity of a delegation led by a head of state. Also, Stalin never invited them over to lunch or dinner and confined his hospitality to snacks. Many scholars, however, present an altogether different view and say Stalin couldn’t be so crude and undiplomatic. But the issue was more than diplomatic etiquette. What was bothering Stalin were lar­ger geopolitical issues, for he didn’t feel hap­py about having a powerful neighbour in Rus­sia’s east, while he faced America and Nato in the west.

Mao was intelligent enough to realise that a delay in conquering the southern part of the country could create complications and encourage non-communist forces to join Chiang’s army. He lost no time, rejected a peace offer, and ordered the Red Army to cross the Yangtze River and capture Nanjing, the KMT capital. Shanghai, the economic hub, fell next. Guangzhou (Canton) followed. A spectacular achievement was the capture of Hainan, an island, by an amphibious invasion wiping out KMT rule from the Chinese mainland. Chiang Kai-shek then fled to Taiwan.

Pakistan is lucky to have China as a neighbour and friend. During my visits to China, I found how the Chinese people remember that it was Pakistan that had brought the US and China together and that president Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao had their historic meeting on Feb 21, 1972, at Mao’s home in Beijing owing to Pakistan’s efforts.

The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

On Sept 16, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) set that judgement aside without substantively engaging with this evidence or the high court’s careful appraisal of it.

Its central reason was a definition. Harassment under the 2010 workplace harassment law, it declared, “is only restricted to conduct which is sexual in nature”. Even by that narrow test, the conduct proved was plainly sexual. Before the high court, the officers never contended it fell short of harassment.

Why does the FCC confine harassment to sex?

The Act’s title and preamble speak of ‘harassment’, not ‘sexual harassment’, and anchor it in the right to dignity. Nor does ‘sexual’ mean only the act of sex; it also means relating to the sexes, or to gender.

The Supreme Court said so on review in Nadia Naz, through Justice Ayesha Malik; “sexually demeaning attitudes” means demeaning a person because of their sex. Yale’s Vicki Schultz has shown that much workplace harassment has nothing to do with desire; it belittles women and signals they do not belong. And the 2022 amendment, ignored altogether, covers gender discrimination “which may or may not be sexual in nature”.

Courts elsewhere agree. The US supreme court held in Oncale that harassment need not be motivated by desire; Canada and India root it in equality and dignity. India’s law lists “sexually coloured remarks”, exactly what was proved, and the 2021 Nadia Naz judgement the FCC relies on quoted that very provision. ILO Convention 190 treats gender-based harassment, including sexual harassment, as one wrong.

This is where a constitutional court should begin. Article 14 declares the dignity of man inviolable, and the Act’s own preamble rests on it. A constitutional court’s first duty is to read statutes through fundamental rights and expand their frontiers, not shrink them. A woman made to name drawings of private parts before her colleagues has had her dignity violated by any measure.

Constitutional courts are judged not by the powers they claim but by the rights they protect.

Our Supreme Court had already arrived there. In Uzma Naveed (2022) and Muhammad Din (2025), both of which I authored, it held that harassment is not confined to the act of sex and that dignity is absolute and non-negotiable. The FCC dismisses Muhammad Din in one sentence, “with due respect”, ignores Uzma Naveed, and leans instead on the 2021 Nadia Naz judgement the Supreme Court set aside on review. In Haji Adam, decided by the same author the same day, substantial passages reappear word for word; it even names the bank case’s witnesses as the Pemra complainant’s. That raises a serious question whether each record received independent judicial consideration.

Precedent is not a courtesy; it is law. Judgements of the Supreme Court delivered before the 27th Amendment bound every court under Article 189. The amendment operates prospectively: it makes the FCC’s decisions binding from now on, but it does not erase nearly eight decades of constitutional jurisprudence. Having inherited the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisdiction, the FCC inherited the law declared under it. If it doubts that law, the doctrine of precedent requires reasoned reconsideration by a larger bench, not a three-member bench’s single sentence. Even the FCC’s own test, set this March, forbids precedent being “ignored and disregarded in silence”.

The deeper problem is the court itself. It was created by the 27th Amendment, rushed through a parliament whose own mandate remains clouded by the disputed elections of February 2024, and carved out of a functioning Supreme Court for reasons never convincingly explained. Britain, the US, India, Canada and Australia entrust constitutional questions to a single apex court, and for good reason: splitting the apex invites conflict and political engineering. South Africa moved the other way in 2013, making its constitutional court the apex court in all matters.

Its first bench was chosen by the president on the prime minister’s advice, bypassing the Judicial Commission, with no published criteria or open assessment of merit. Such a court must earn confidence through its work.

A judgement rendered without hearing the attorney general or appointing an amicus (even the high court had one), and thin on scholarship and constitutional understanding, does not earn it. Nor does the price: salaries above the Supreme Court’s until that court was raised to match, generous staff allowances, and three more years of tenure.

Not a single woman sits on the FCC, a conspicuous absence in a harassment case. I cast no aspersion on any judge who accepted appointment; that is for each conscience. Yet the absence speaks. The women of our judiciary stand apart from this court and deserve the country’s admiration.

Such judgements belong to the bar too, for it is very much part of this new judicial era. Bar associations are guarantor institutions; in 2007 they marched until judges were restored. When the architecture of the 26th and 27th Amendments was assembled, that resistance never came. Too many at the bar’s helm measure ambition by proximity to power rather than fidelity to democracy. That is a deficit of character, not of numbers. When the guardians fall silent, unconstitutionalism rises.

Constitutional courts are judged not by the powers they claim but by the rights they protect. If this is the direction of travel, dark years lie ahead for rights. Faiz urged us to speak while our lips are still free. It now falls to the lawyers who remember 2007, the academy and those who refuse to be silenced to keep the lamps lit.

The writer is a former senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Professor of Practice at SAHSOL, Lums and currently a Visiting Fellow at Yale University, US.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

Mr Dimri said this while visiting the National Council of Arts in Islamabad. The heritage, art, and culture that Pakistan and India share have repeatedly fallen victim to toxic narratives designed to provoke hate. Yet the cultural link carries a powerful sense of mutual belonging. It may be premature to read too much into the Indian delegate’s visit or to view his words as evidence of a thaw after last May’s stand-off. Still, the episode offers some hope: if leaders on both sides choose to move forward, the dialogue could quickly regain momentum.

However, optimism should be tempered — as should any expectation that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Islamabad to attend the SCO summit. If he did, it would be a miracle, and the biggest surprise in decades — even bigger than Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Islamabad in 1988 to attend the Saarc summit or Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s arrival in Lahore in 1999. Both occasions had generated enormous hope for peace between the two neighbours. What actually followed is a familiar story.

Another miracle would be if Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Islamabad SCO summit next year. Pakistan is more curious about this visit and hopes it may trigger a major shift in its geopolitics and ambitions in Central Asia, while influencing the regional discourse in ways that would irritate India.

Pakistan would be keen to enhance its defence cooperation with Russia, but particularly interested in making some progress on the much-discussed railway from Moscow to Islamabad and establishing a freight corridor using existing 7,000-kilometre-long railway networks, with Pakistan linked to Russia through Central Asia and/or Iran. Over the decades, Pakistan, the Central Asian states, and Iran have conceived many transnational projects, and each time with great enthusiasm, yet none has materialised. Afghanistan is always made to bear the burden of the blame because of its complex relationship with Pakistan.

Russia is likely to remain cautious about deepening its cooperation with Pakistan.

Is it not interesting that the conventional wars fought by India and Pakistan collectively may not have lasted for more than a few weeks, and that Pakistan fought its longest war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Pakistan and the Afghan mujahideen, together with the US, defeated the Russians, which was followed by the dismantling of the Soviet state. The Pakistani leadership still takes pride in that success.

Of course, times have changed, and Pakistan is looking to cultivate new economic and defence opportunities. Russia, however, is likely to remain cautious about deepening its cooperation with Pakistan. This is not because of their bitter past, from which both sides have moved on, but because of divergent regional interests, particularly over Afghanistan, and Russia’s deep and long-standing engagement with India.

Russian-Indian defence and economic cooperation is not necessarily an obstacle to developing ties with Pakistan. But it does mean that Islamabad cannot be regarded as a preferred partner in that context.

The disparity in economic relations is significant: Pakistan’s bilateral trade with Russia is less than half a billion dollars, compared with around $69bn in India-Russia trade. The gap is even more pronounced in defence cooperation.

India maintains a high level of military engagement with Russia through multiple military-technical cooperation frameworks, including joint research and development, co-development, co-production, and after-sales support. By contrast, Russia’s defence engagement with Pakistan remains selective and falls well short of a strategic military partnership.

At the same time, India’s diversification of its defence partnerships has not significantly weakened its relationship with Russia. Moscow may have reservations about some aspects of New Delhi’s growing defence ties with other countries, but there are no clear signs of a fundamental deterioration in bilateral relations.

Russia’s interest in Pakistan is, therefore, largely geopolitical — maintaining engagement with Islamabad allows Moscow to show that its international network of partnerships is broad, while also keeping channels open with Pakistan’s political and security leaders, including those who have close ties with US President Donald Trump.

Public diplomacy is a domain through which Russia keeps its support club intact and seeks to enhance it, engaging Pakistani media, academics, opinion-makers, and policymakers through exchange programmes. The SCO is another platform Russia uses more extensively than other partners for public diplomacy.

Russia and Pakistan share counterterrorism concerns, but their approaches to Afghanistan differ sharply. Russia has recognised the Taliban regime, but Pakistan is fighting a tough war against terrorism and sees Afghanistan as a source of the war.

In geo-economic terms, they have different priorities. Russia wants Afgha­n­istan in the camp of its Central Asian allies. At the same time, Pakistan is a major partner of the US in areas where the interests of the two countries converge in Afghanistan. This irritates not only Russia but also China, which wants the US to stay out of the region in its immediate neighbourhood. The US took two decades to leave Afghanistan, and China does not want to see it coming back.

It is not surprising that Indian-Russian relations have had few hiccups over decades. At the same time, Pakistan chose the US as its strategic partner after independence. Still, their relationship has not been smooth. Pakistan’s strategic partnership with China has also been tested recently, triggered by CPEC-related disputes and internal security concerns regarding Chinese nationals in Pakistan.

Perhaps Russia is a new love interest for a segment of Pakistan’s power elite, but the two have little to share. And the last optimistic note: what if India and Pakistan decide to live in peace? What would the geopolitical impact be?

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

Pakistan has particular reason to pay attention. It has hosted generations of Afghans and remains home to more than 700,000 registered Afghan refugees, even as large numbers return across the border. Cuts to refugee protection, therefore, carry consequences — for Afghans still living in Pakistan and for families attempting to rebuild their lives after returning home. More broadly, some 117.8m people worldwide were forcibly displaced at the end of 2025, yet shrinking aid budgets are moving in the opposite direction. UNHCR has shed nearly 5,000 jobs, more than a quarter of its workforce. Such funding cuts are shortsighted. Refugee protection is not simply charity; it helps prevent poverty, insecurity, and displacement from deepening. Major donors must restore funding, while the burden should be shared more widely. There is little wisdom, and even less humanity, in saving money today only to face a larger displacement crisis tomorrow.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

That calls for distinguishing between growth and productive growth. A temporary expansion in construction, real estate or consumption can raise GDP. It cannot create foreign exchange earnings needed to sustain that expansion. Our recurring problem is that growth eventually runs into the external account. Imports rise, reserves come under pressure, and the country returns to stabilisation. That cycle must be broken. The IMF’s own assessment makes clear that macroeconomic stability remains a prerequisite, not an obstacle to growth. It has called for deeper reforms to improve governance, competition, productivity, the business environment, energy sector viability and human capital. It has also warned that unfinished structural reforms would leave Pakistan dependent on the public sector and vulnerable to renewed imbalances. This is why the language of a ‘shift’ needs careful handling. Stabilisation cannot simply be relaxed to create room for faster growth. The government still has to protect fiscal discipline, rebuild external buffers and keep inflation under control. The real transition to growth, therefore, should be from stabilisation through transformation. Growth cannot be proclaimed merely because the immediate crisis has eased. Growth must come from expanding globally competitive manufacturing, modernisation of agriculture, IT and services, and export-oriented SMEs. The test is whether the government can make growth durable rather than another short-lived expansion.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

Hostilities are continuing; there were reports on Saturday of both Riyadh and Sana’a being attacked.

Meanwhile, members of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement are due to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the Yemen situation.

Regarding Iran, the US has reportedly ordered thousands more troops, as well as an aircraft carrier group, to the Gulf. This mirrors the build-up of American forces around Iran before the US-Israeli assault targeted the Islamic Republic in late February. Top US officials have reportedly met at Camp David to discuss the Yemen and Iran files.

Diplomacy, it seems, is giving way to more war in the Gulf and the wider Middle East.

The humanitarian situation in Yemen is dire, with hundreds of thousands of people uprooted, while the UN says millions of Yemenis, including more than 2m infants, face acute hunger. If the Yemen war sucks in more regional states, it will complicate matters further.

The best option, therefore, is for Muslim and Arab states to help restore the Saudi-Houthi ceasefire. The Houthi Ansarallah group must pledge to stop its attacks on Saudi Arabia, while ensuring free passage through Bab al-Mandeb. The Saudis, on their part, should consider lifting the blockade of Houthi territory, while encouraging all Yemeni factions to peacefully resolve the internal conflict.

The Yemen war has been raging for over a decade, and previous external interventions have failed to end it; in fact, continued violence has exacerbated the humanitarian situation.

With regard to Iran, it appears that President Donald Trump’s administration has halted kinetic action only till the November US midterms, and plans to restart hostilities after elections are out of the way. This would be a grave error.

US-Israeli aggression has caused great loss of life in Iran as well as damage to infrastructure, while the global economy has been shell-shocked due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The world — particularly the states of the region — cannot afford more disruption and war.

Mr Trump has turned down the recent Iranian proposal to open Hormuz. He should reconsider his strategy and restart dialogue with Tehran, while the Iranians should promise to reopen the strait if the US lifts its blockade of Iran and eases sanctions.

The US leader has hailed the exit of American troops from Iraq. He should work on a similar plan to bring his forces home from elsewhere in the Gulf and end the Iran war.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026

The prevalence of mental despair and the absence of treatment have contributed to the burden of years ‘lived with disability’, and inflicted profound economic damage. In fraught times, anxiety, depression among the young, suicides and substance abuse surge at an alarming rate. Climate change and digital settings further diminish mental health resilience. The stigma associated with this agony has added to the human toll. Pakistan cannot afford to falter now. The policy’s success depends on changing regressive mindsets, and making access and provision of counsellors available at the tertiary level. Meanwhile, general practitioners should be aware of the importance of identifying symptoms so that patients receive timely psychiatric attention. While affordable care is crucial, there must be consequences for those who overmedicate. Mental health disorders keep children out of classrooms and leave adults without opportunities. Experts say women are twice as susceptible to being diagnosed with depression. The cost of mental illness, internalised shame, and looking away is high. Regular and open conversations about mental health remove entrenched fallacies to ensure that sufferers never become footnotes.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

In a controversial move, New Delhi held the decades-old agreement ‘in abeyance’ in 2025 after the Pahalgam episode. But as Pakistan’s senior leadership has highlighted, Indian brinkmanship in this regard may set a negative precedent globally, while also planting the seeds of a new conflict in South Asia.

Speaking at an event in Islamabad the other day, Information Minister Atta Tarar said that India’s unilateral action vis-à-vis the IWT could threaten global water governance. He termed New Delhi’s moves “morally bankrupt and devoid of ethics”.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had raised the issue earlier, when he addressed the UN General Assembly last week. He did not mince his words when he said that diverting Pakistan’s water would amount to an “act of war”.

This is not mere rhetoric. The Indus and its tributaries are Pakistan’s lifeline, and the country cannot allow India to blackmail it using these precious waters. India has ruled out restoring the treaty until Pakistan acts against ‘cross-border terrorism’. This is a weak alibi being deployed to take what belongs to Pakistan. New Delhi has remained adamant despite the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in August that the IWT could not be unilaterally suspended.

India has brushed aside the court’s decision. Along with the key issue of water rights, the larger question is what sort of precedent India wants to set. Its leaders speak of multilateralism and the global ‘rules-based order’.

Yet in practice, when they scupper bilateral treaties and refuse to recognise decisions by respected arbitrators, the Indians in fact promote the law of the jungle. Pakistan must continue to pursue its legitimate rights with regard to the Indus waters. It must also point out the double standards India adheres to — claiming to uphold global norms, yet trampling on international law.

If the IWT dispute is left to fester, or worse, if India takes further steps to cut off Pakistan’s share of water, a new conflict in South Asia is quite possible. In order to avoid such a grim scenario, saner elements in India must work towards restoring the IWT, and addressing all other outstanding issues in a civilised manner.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

The meeting had been called after the president and prime minister met on Thursday to discuss the national political and security situation. It seemed like a last-ditch attempt at defusing the escalating political crisis ahead of the PTI’s planned march on the federal capital, scheduled for this Sunday.

Another round of talks will be held today, with time running out. Neither side had much to say regarding what was accomplished in the first round. Mr Sadiq’s assertion that parliament is the right forum for talks is correct, but the opposition is equally justified in demanding that the government demonstrate its seriousness. There is a trust deficit that needs to be bridged quickly.

The government’s constant threats to suspend KP’s elected dispensation over a political protest have escalated hostilities considerably. In that context, both sides did well to start talking.

The PTI’s Barrister Gohar Khan called the one-hour meeting “cordial”, which gives hope. The prime minister’s special assistant on political affairs did not share as positive an assessment, however — pointing to the fact that no decisions were taken and there was no clear progress.

The PTI also seems determined to keep its protest call intact during the negotiations, while the government wants it cancelled unconditionally. The opposition has already shown flexibility by delaying the march from Sept 27 to Oct 4 — perhaps it can be convinced to consider another extension to give the talks a proper chance.

It was not a good omen that the opposition leader in the National Assembly boycotted the sit-down. The fact that the PTI went ahead without him shows that it is putting at least some faith in the process.

Opposition leaders said they need to consult former prime minister Imran Khan to finalise their agenda. Permitting a meeting with him at Adiala is an easy, low-cost goodwill gesture for the government and could create a quick breakthrough.

The other important items for the PTI are allowing the jailed leader to be moved to hospital and the release of his sisters who were arrested ahead of the planned march. Taking these steps would help ease tensions.

The point made by PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari regarding unity against terrorism and hostility from neighbours is a fair one, but national unity alone cannot be a reason to shut down legitimate political dissent. Both sides must step back from ultimatums. The threat of governor’s rule must be taken off the table, and the PTI should drop its ‘we will march no matter what’ stance.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

Ever since she was arrested in May of this year, Pinky’s case has garnered a ton of media attention; purported voice recordings in which she taunts police over their inability to catch her, and the branding on her alleged product, ‘Queen Medam Pinky’ and ‘Naam hi kafi hai’, have all the ingredients of a gangster movie. Except, of course, that there is a ‘godmother’ at the centre of it all.

What then to make of a woman who appears to have made a name for herself in the male dominated gangster world? As a weekly columnist for over a decade, I’ve written regularly about Pakistani women.

I’ve written about innumerable cases in which women are beaten down by the system, by men, by in-laws, by their own male relatives, by the economy and by all the forces that coalesce to keep women ‘in their place’. Often, these columns are obituaries. Just two weeks ago, for instance, I wrote about a nine-year-old girl from Swat named Ishmal, whose only mistake was to go to her neighbour’s house as she often did. She was allegedly sexually assaulted and killed. Or let’s remember Hina Javed’s case from just over a month ago — a woman married to a former professor at Nust, who was found dead in a bathroom after allegedly suffering abuse and torture.

These are the usual stories of women in Pakistan, and I know you know many more than the ones I have written about. Women trapped in abusive and even torturous marriages because they do not know if they will be able to make it on their own. Or women who have tried to make it on their own and are punished at every turn, landlords rejecting them for not having a man of the house, bosses harassing them because they are seen as available because of their single status. And these are stories of the middle class; poverty exacerbates all of these cruelties even further. Life in Pakistan in 2026 is harsh and Hobbesian for everyone, but for women it is a particular kind of hell.

Defiance alone is not a virtue.

Then there is Pinky — an alleged cocaine dealer whose lethal product was packaged under her name. Born into a family of modest means with a home in Lyari’s Baloch Para, she finished Class VIII. According to investigators, she then left for Lahore to pursue modelling. According to police, it was from her former husband, a lawyer and alleged drug dealer, that she learned the drug trade.

Investigators allege that she went on to manage an extensive cocaine network spanning Karachi and Lahore, using riders, social media, benami accounts, and other intermediaries. She allegedly sold to customers in Karachi’s affluent areas. Her story is unusual, but the allegations against her are serious: drug trafficking is not an act of female emancipation simply because the person accused of running the operation is a woman.

Selling drugs is a reprehensible trade. Sadly, many turn to it to escape penury. It is an aspect to reflect on — without turning Pinky’s alleged criminal enterprise into a heroic rebellion. The same poverty and absence of opportunity that can make criminal networks attractive also produce countless victims of the narcotics trade.

Pinky must pay for her crimes. Even as I say that, I cannot help but wonder how many of the wealthy and influential people allegedly connected to her network will face similar scrutiny. Police said an initial forensic examination of her phone identified hundreds of contacts, including 300 alleged active customers, as well as multiple bank accounts allegedly used for payments. Will we ever know who among the powerful benefited from or sustained this trade?

Pakistani society is often eager to make a woman pay even as it looks askance at the sins of male leaders, politicians, industrialists, and others with power. But equality cannot mean transforming an alleged drug dealer into a feminist heroine. It must mean equal accountability: for Pinky if the charges against her are proved, for those who allegedly enabled her operation, and for the wealthy customers whose money made such a lucrative trade possible.

A defiant woman is a rare creature in Pakistan, and one who manages to stay alive while challenging powerful structures may be rarer still. But defiance alone is not a virtue. Pinky’s story may tell us much about gender, poverty, power and hypocrisy in Pakistan. None of that requires us to turn her into a heroine.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

Ironically, philosophers are suddenly in high demand at leading AI firms. This isn’t because techies desire to answer humanity’s big questions. Rather, Silicon Valley’s newfound penchant for philosophers has ominous, if not sinister, motives. AI firms are racing to develop artificial superintelligence — AI that vastly exceeds human capabilities in all domains. To that end, philosophers now help AI firms ponder metaphysical questions: does AI have character, and if not, how can it be developed? Do chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude suffer or can they be harmed?

At this breakneck speed, a superintelligent model may not be far off. Experts are already alarmed at how unpredictable today’s AI can be. In July, OpenAI disclosed that hundreds of its AI agents unexpectedly communicated and banded together to hack Hugging Face, a popular platform for AI developers. No engineer had told them to do it.

To exceed humans, AI firms must first grapple with what it means to have a mind, emotions, and biology. Unsurprisingly, their language now hints that AI has all three. The field of ‘AI interpretability’ focuses on LLMs’ ‘internal reasoning’ and ‘introspection’. Some scholars have even speculated about finding discernible states within LLMs that mirror joy, satisfaction, fear and grief. AI firms also regularly use biological terms like ‘neurons’, ‘training’, and ‘neural networks’ in relation to LLMs.

Granting ‘legal personhood’ to AI will create a moral hazard.

In 1980, the philosopher John Searle imagined a man who does not speak Chinese, locked in a room, matching Chinese symbols to instructions written in English. To an outsider, his replies resemble fluent conversation, but the man understands nothing. A computer, argued Searle, does the same. It manipulates symbols without grasping the meaning. Today, AI firms have revived the very vocabulary Searle warned against.

If AI firms convince the public that AI possesses human traits, it is a short leap to pitching AI as a legal person having the same rights as humans. This is all sci-fi, you say?

All 50 US states treat corporations as legal persons, able to carry out business, including rights to own property, sue, and enter into contracts. Corporations also enjoy constitutional rights. In 2010, in ‘Citizens United vs Federal Election Com­mission’, the US supreme court allowed corporations to spend freely on politics. This steady expansion of corporate rights may become a blueprint for AI personhood.

Granting ‘legal personhood’ to AI will create what economists call a moral hazard, insulating AI progenitors from liability, thereby encouraging even more shortcuts on safety. AI is already on the verge of going rogue, but with legal person status, it could become an actual existential threat to humanity. The gravest threat may be what historian Jill Lepore calls the ‘artificial state’, where power shifts from elected government to machines, algorithms and the corporations that own them. In such a system, citizens delegate to polit­i­c­i­ans, politic­i­ans to bureaucr­ats, bur­eaucrats to contractors, and contractors to AI models — in short, a long delegation cha­in, where decisions are made by AI models nobody voted for.

Even before AI, Pakistan offers a preview of this delegation problem. Most remedies for its ‘broken’ political system involve carving its provinces into sub-units. Thankfully, a few have also focused on improving the quality of democracy at the local level — making cities politically and financially independent. We should dread the day an AI firm is tasked with fixing Pakistan’s political system.

In the final analysis, AI needs close monitoring. AI regulation isn’t just so-called wokeism. It is a survival imperative. With smart regulation, the path to the artificial state can be blocked. We must also question the idea of AI having a mind, emotions and biology before AI is granted personhood. Perhaps we should re-read Searle, who argued that a computer running a programme can never truly ‘understand’ anything, no matter how convincingly it appears to do so.

The writercompleted his doctorate in economics on a Fulbright scholarship.

aqdas.afzal@gmail.com

X:@AqdasAfzal

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

More than four centuries earlier, Gul Khatoon, the visionary Mughal princess and wife of Baltistan ruler Ali Sher Khan Anchan, had transformed the high-altitude desert of Skardu into a fertile valley through the construction of the Sadpara Dam and a canal network. Her achievement remains one of the greatest examples of public works undertaken in Baltistan’s history. In 2001, Wapda launched the upgradation of the Sadpara Dam project to enhance water storage, irrigation and power generation. Among its most important components was the diversion of water from the Shatung Nullah into the Sadpara reservoir. Reportedly to save the construction company from possible losses through an administrative decision, this critical component was abandoned.

As the years passed, repeated assurances were given to Skardu residents that the diversion project would be completed. Presentations were made, promises repeated and hopes raised. But the valley continued to face water shortages, while population growth, urban expansion and tourism steadily increased demand. It was against this backdrop that an alternative idea began to take shape.

The recently inaugurated water diversion project in GB reflects the strength of community-led action.

The concept was developed through discussions among engineers, development professionals and members of civil society. A key role was played by Nazir Ahmed, whose long experience in community development and rural infrastructure projects not only identified the site but also provided the technical and organisational foundation for the initiative. The question was simple, if governments and institutions could not solve the problem, could the people solve it themselves?

The answer came from an unexpected source. Agha Syed Muhammad Baqir al-Hussaini, widely respected as a religious leader, announced that the people of Baltistan would construct the channel themselves. Many were sceptical. Some considered the idea unrealistic. Others questioned whether a religious scholar could manage a technically demanding engineering project. In fact, Agha Baqir’s education and training extended far beyond religious instruction. Years of rigorous study in the renowned institutions of Iran had exposed him to questions of governance, public welfare and community organisation. More importantly, he possessed the one quality essential to leadership: the ability to inspire trust. He assembled a team of engineers and technical experts. Alongside them stood respected members of civil society who volunteered their services. Prominent among them were experienced engineers Mohammad Yusuf, Hassan, Shujaat and Irshad. A broader committee of prominent citizens was created to oversee finances, monitor implementation and ensure transparency.

For decades, they had heard announcements and promises. Now they could see excavators moving, workers labouring and engineers surveying difficult terrain. The initiative started with modest donations but as the work began everyone started contributing including overseas Baltis. The people donated Rs130 million. Support also came from state institutions, including the Pakistan Army, which provided assistance at critical stages. The decisive breakthrough, however, came when chief minister Haji Gulbar Khan committed substantial financial support. Coming from Diamer, one of the most underdeveloped regions of Gilgit-Baltistan, he understood the hardship caused by water scarcity and recognised the transformative potential of the project. The GB government sanctioned Rs150m. The total cost of the project is Rs320m.

The terrain through which the channel had to pass was unforgiving. The construction season in Baltistan is short. Long winters halt work for several months a year. Mountainous landscapes create engineering challenges. Over a period of three years, the actual work took one year, with the completed project benefiting a population of 250,000. It provided the people an average 115 cusecs of water from a channel almost five metres wide and11 kilometres long — built with love and care.

What makes this project particularly noteworthy is that it was completed at a fraction of the cost normally associated with public-sector infrastructure schemes. The combination of community participation, transparent oversight and technical competence demonstrated that development need not always be accompanied by excessive expenditure. Most importantly, the project was far more than an engineering undertaking. It united the people of Baltistan. Religious leaders belonging to different schools of thought supported it. Comm­unities divided by sectarian affiliations contributed to it. Businessmen, labourers, professionals, government servants and ordinary citizens all regarded the project as their own. In a region often portrayed through the lens of division, the canal became a symbol of collective purpose. On Aug 10, 2026, its inauguration ceremony was held on the spectacular Deosai Plateau. For many participants, watching water flow towards the Sadpara reservoir was the fulfilment of a dream.

GB’s people have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to undertake difficult public works through collective effort. From ancient irrigation channels carved into mountainsides to community-built roads linking remote valleys, self-help has long been part of the region’s culture. The Phailong Stream to the Sadpara Diversion project lies firmly within that tradition.

Encouraged by the success, the project’s supporters have established an organisation named after Ali Sher Khan Anchan. The objective is to preserve the experience gained from this initiative and provide a platform for future community-driven development projects. Wapda failed to divert the Shatung Nullah; it can now utilise this new institution to accomplish the task more efficiently with greater community support.

The canal is a statement of confidence, resilience and empowerment. It demonstrates what can be achieved when visionary leadership combines with technical expertise, public trust and community participation. For the federation, there is an important lesson as well. GB’s people are not passive recipients of development and possess the determination, organisational capacity and social cohesion necessary to solve their own problems. What they require is recognition and support. This amazing feat belongs not to any one individual but to an entire society that refused to surrender or despair.

The writer, a former IGP Sindh, belongs to Gilgit-Baltistan.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

The amendment would create an exception allowing the presiding officer of a legislature to ask the ECP to keep a member’s statements confidential if the presiding officer determines that publication would pose a serious threat to the member’s life or safety.

The bill was forwarded to the Senate but, fortunately, has not yet been passed. Earlier, the ECP was pressured into discontinuing the practice of posting the Gazette Notification of legislators’ statements of assets and liabilities on its website, and people were constrained to purchase a hard copy of the Gazette Notification through a complicated and time-consuming procedure, diluting the intended transparency guaranteed by the law.

This is not the first attempt to undermine laws requiring transparent information about elected public officials or about those aspiring to public office. The Elections Act, 2017, was a landmark piece of legislation that included several electoral reforms but, unfortunately, did away with the legal requirement for each candidate for public office to submit some 19 declarations under oath along with nomination papers.

The declarations provided and made public information such as candidates’ assets, liabilities, educational qualifications, tax paid, and records of registered criminal cases, if any, against the candidate, along with similar data, to help voters make an informed choice.

After civil society reacted to this blatant reversal of transparency, the Lahore High Court, and later the Supreme Court, stepped in. In its June 6, 2018, judgment, the Supreme Court chief justice restored the requirement of public affidavits after journalists filed a public interest petition.

Making the assets and liabilities of senior civil servants public has been a contentious issue in Pakistan for a long time. Advocates of transparency argue that public disclosure is vital to combat corruption and track illicit enrichment.

Civil servants and certain state institutions often give counterarguments that making their monetary worth public compromises their personal privacy and puts their families at risk of extortion, kidnapping, and targeted harassment. They argue that the media can take asset declarations out of context, leading to unfair public scrutiny or ‘media trials’ before any wrongdoing is proven.

There is a trend of undermining processes meant to ensure transparency in public bodies.

Senior civil servants also view external demands for transparency as an infringement on their institutional independence or an attempt to weaken their administrative authority. These arguments and counter-arguments are not confined to Pakistan; they are part of a global debate, but it is more pronounced in developing countries like ours.

Both sides’ positions may carry weight, but the balance recently tilted in favour of transparency when the IMF put its foot down and demanded that the government ensure senior civil servants’ assets are made public. The Fund’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment, made public last November, included 15 priority recommendations for the government.

One of them requires the FBR, the Establishment Division, and NAB to strengthen accountability and integrity among high-level federal civil servants by initiating the publication of asset declarations in 2026 and introducing risk-based verification of asset declarations within six months. Ironically, an international agency had to impose this transparency; we ourselves failed to introduce the practice as a voluntary measure of good governance.

There is a trend of undermining processes meant to ensure transparency in public bodies. Pakistan has enacted the Transparency and Right to Information (RTI) laws both at the federal and provincial levels.

In addition, independent information commissions have been established in Islamabad and the four provincial capitals to adjudicate complaints regarding the denial of information under the Act. Despite this elaborate transparency infrastructure, requests for information have suffered setbacks in some celebrated cases.

An Islamabad-based journalist, Rana Abrar Khalid, had submitted an information request to the Cabinet Division in November 2020 seeking details of gifts received, retained and deposited in the toshakhana by then prime minister Imran Khan. The request was denied.

The journalist filed a complaint with the Pakistan Information Commission, which upheld the request’s legitimacy and directed the government to provide the information. Instead, the federal government filed a petition with the Islamabad High Court, which dismissed it. The government was planning to approach the Supreme Court when the Imran Khan government was removed through a vote of no-confidence.

A request for information about staff strength, vacancies, temporary employees, new positions, gender diversity in the workforce, and the latest approved Service Rules of the Supreme Court, filed under the RTI law in 2019, was declared unmaintainable.

Still, the chief justice ‘magnanimously’ asked the registrar to provide the information. Sadly, it set a precedent that superior courts are not covered by RTI laws, although the laws do not explicitly exempt superior courts.

In April 2026, citing the Supreme Court precedent, the Lahore High Court refused to disclose its policy on judicial privileges and details of the official vehicles used by judges, even though the Punjab Information Commission had upheld the request. The Commission, however, withdrew its direction to the Lahore High Court to provide the information after the court’s judgement.

Transparency is an important ingredient of good governance, and any backsliding on this count will further weaken the quality of governance. Pakistan should review, and reverse, the recent trend of diluting transparency.

The writer is the president of Pakistan-based think tank Pildat.

president@pildat.org

X: @ABMPildat

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2026

However, both parties postponed their marches (although the PTI has indicated it would begin its protest over the weekend), which temporarily eased the immediate concern of large-scale agitation. But, despite the postponements, the episode has once again highlighted the recurring pattern of opposition parties resorting to street agitation. It has raised several questions regarding the rationale of this politics of agitation.

Why do some political parties in Pakistan consistently resort to street agitation, road blockades, and prolonged sit-ins, while others continue to place their faith in parliamentary procedures and institutional mechanisms? What does this divergence reveal about the country’s political cultu­re? These questions lie at the heart of understanding the recurring cycle of protests that has come to define much of Pakistan’s contemporary politics.

In Pakistan’s political culture, agitation has recently served as a potent instrument for opposition parties to convert street power into tangible political gains through the ballot box. By orchestrating prolonged protests and sit-ins, parties have succeeded in mobilising their grassroots workers, reinvigorating cadre loyalty, and projecting an im­­­age of resistance against the status quo. Ex­­ces­sive media coverage provides publicity that often elevates relatively smaller actors to the level of na­­tional relevance, while the narrative of standing up for the ‘common man’ against an unresponsive system helps cultivate a saviour-like persona.

This dynamic was most visibly demonstrated by the PTI, whose 2014 Islamabad dharna and 2016 ‘lockdown’ agitation not only kept the party in the headlines for months but also laid the organisational and perceptual groundwork for its dramatic electoral expansion in 2018. Through this strategy, the PTI secured phenomenal electoral gains, from a modest 34 National Assembly seats in 2013 to 120 seats in 2018.

Since 2012, the state’s response to political agitation has undergone a noticeable evolution.

Similar patterns are evident at the regional levels. The TLP registered itself as a political party in 2016 and after its long march on Islamabad in November 2017, it remarkably secured 2.2 million votes in the 2018 elections. Maulana Hidayatur Rehman’s sustained agitation in Gwadar transformed him from a marginal local political figure into a formidable voice of Gwadar, while Hafiz Naeemur Rehman’s high-visibility protests in Karachi have allowed the Jamaat-i-Islami to reclaim political space in urban Sindh. It is precisely this proven formula of converting agitation into both visibility and voter sympathy that appears to have encouraged the current Jamaat chief to attempt replicating the strategy on a national scale.

At its core, however, the recurring resort to agitation also reflects a deep lack of trust in the government, legitimacy of the electoral system, and the taxation system, compounded by the widespread perception of corruption. When citizens believe that taxes are routinely misappropriated rather than spent on public welfare, protests become the default language of political expression, as institutional channels are viewed as ineffective or compromised.

However, this strategy of political agitation also carries significant socioeconomic costs. Prolonged protests and road blockades not only disrupt daily economic activities, they also impose heavy financial burdens on businesses, trade, and ordinary citizens. The PTI’s 2014 Islamabad sit-ins, which stretched for 126 days, and the subsequent waves of agitation in later years, created extended periods of uncertainty, including around 152 days of political and economic instability within a span of two years. As per a recent statement by the finance minister, every single day of protest may inflict an economic loss of around Rs120 billion on Pakistan’s economy.

When this figure is applied to the 152 days of protests witnessed over the past decade, the cumulative financial damage is staggering and exposes the severe economic cost of sustained political agitation. These disruptions led to substantial losses in the trade, transport, and retail sectors, while simultaneously damaging market sentiment and eroding investor confidence, as prolonged street unrest signals political instability and policy unpredictability.

Since 2012, the state’s response to political agitation has undergone a noticeable evolution. In the earlier phase, the government largely avoided direct confrontation. Instead, it opted for dialogue and negotiation. Federal ministers were frequently nominated by the prime minister of the time to engage with protest leaders, as seen during Tahirul Qadri’s 2012-13 sit-ins in Islamabad, the PTI’s prolonged 2014 dharna, and the TLP’s 2017 long march. These episodes reflected the government’s preference for political management over force. From 2012 to 2017, the state apparatus largely attempted to defuse tensions through concessions or mediated settlements rather than immediate crackdowns.

Over time, however, this approach has shifted towards greater repression. Successive governments have increasingly relied on heavy-handed tactics, including the use of force, communication blackout, mass arrests, and restrictions on movement to disperse protests. While this strategy has, to some extent, discouraged repeated large-scale national-level agitations by raising the cost of mobilisation, it has simultaneously deepened public resentment towards state institutions. The perception of an increasingly authoritarian response has further eroded public trust in the system, and reinforced the very sense of institutional alienation that often fuels street protests in the first place.

Although both the Jamaat and PTI postponed their long marches to Islamabad, the underlying tension between the opposition’s inclination towards street agitation and the government’s readiness to suppress such mobilisations remains. This recurring pattern continues to raise important questions: Can Pakistan continue to afford the repeated economic and institutional costs of agitation and repression? Or will the state and political actors eventually recognise the need to strengthen formal institutions such as the judiciary, parliament, and the standing committees of the National Assembly and Senate so that grievances can be resolved through dialogue and established democratic mechanisms rather than through the streets?

The writer is a strategic analyst of international security. The views expressed are his own.

X: @itskhurramabbas

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

What is their conception of this model? Briefly, the belief is in an all-powerful centre that forces its economic commands through long-term plans across the entire country, whips up economic growth through major government interventions, and leaves a limited role for the lower tiers (local) of governance. It is worth contemplating whether these views align with ground realities.

A good place to start is the recent paper by Fengming Lu and Xiao Ma, ‘The rise of China’s electric vehicle industry’, which helps demolish several myths. Champion EV firms like BYD and NIO are all private firms that did not get a single penny in state grants, which, instead, went to SOEs for EV research. Even more astonishing, these firms rose in cities the state apparatus did not identify for EV cluster development. How, then, did these firms accomplish this feat? The short answer: mayors of the cities that were left out teamed up with entrepreneurs, helping them usher in the latest achievement of China’s stellar development story.

Notice that city mayors have the authority to act as they please within their locality. In this case, their initiative and actions undermined the SOEs. Yet, the central government never intervened to prevent it, thus demolishing the myth of an all-powerful centre that micromanages everything and does not tolerate local authority.

The Chinese state mainly acts as a facilitator for development in any way it can. In Pakistan, it’s the opposite.

China has a highly competitive and well-established local tier system. Passage to the higher echelons of the central party is possible only through performance at this level. Unlike in Pakistan, there is no chance of attaining a prominent party position merely by being a scion or progeny of a party head. (Interested readers can look up President Xi Jinping’s road to the presidency.)

Second, it demonstrates that the state is willing to tolerate ‘creative destruction’, a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter, to describe how competition and creativity can render some businesses useless. This is classic capitalism, not socialism or communism. In the race for EVs, private competitors left state-run SOEs far behind, but the centre never intervened to prevent their slide. In fact, competition is so intense that it has led to price wars, with some firms expected to fail (one county reportedly lost 6.6 billion yuan on a carmaker it supported).

Similar misconceptions exist around its long-term plans. These actually contain insights of tremendous depth, coming from top-tier experts. Plans are contemplated and debated at length rather than rushed through. The economic debates preceding the 14th party congress offer an apt illustration. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, between October and December 1991 (known as ‘eleven half-days’), the debate centred on why the USSR’s economy collapsed and what could be done to prevent the same from happening to China.

The end result was the adoption of the famous ‘modern enterprise system’, approved by the party in November 1993, which enunciated “clear property rights, clearly defined rights and responsibilities, separation of government and enterprise, and scientific management”, that would prove to be a critical moment in China’s march to prosperity.

The gist is that prevailing conceptions of China as a centrally administered economy with a benevolent dictator at the helm directing its stellar rise are misplaced. In fact, it is arguably the most decentralised governance system in the world, with more than 80 per cent of public expenditure at the local level, and mayors who enjoy independence in their fiscal and administrative decision-making.

The centre is still very powerful, but not in a manner that we understand. It has some red lines that it enforces. The rich, for example, are not allowed to attain influence to an extent that they are in a position to manipulate the state apparatus by tailoring it in their favour to the detriment of the country and its people. This explains, for example, why Communist Party members are banned from holding golf club memberships.

The underlying philosophy is simple: facilitate capital creation and growth, but prevent it from working against the public good and the country. The state mainly acts as a facilitator for development in any way it can. In Pakistan, it’s the complete opposite. Big capital dictates and manipulates policies, whether through tax exemptions or trillions doled out in public-sector contracts. The sugar mafia is a pertinent example, whose powerful members, sitting in the legislature, sway policies and regulations in their favour. (Note: the above should not be taken as advocacy for anti-capital formation policies. Instead, it should be viewed in terms of regulating capital’s negative spillovers.)

And lest we forget, the corrupt in China are handed the death penalty. Try naming a few cases in Pakistan where a similar predicament befell the corrupt. In essence, China’s remarkable transformation to where it stands today constitutes a long, arduous, and messy process that began with Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 reforms, with the above merely offering a glimpse of that long journey.

Why then clamour for this ‘model’ that no one in our power halls would be willing to implement? After all, that would be hara-kiri for a corrupt, compromised elite which thrives on central control and illegally accrued rents via this system.

Well, more than four years into the current experiment, the economy is still struggling to get out of the stagflationary rut in which it has been stuck since 2022; the average GDP growth has barely surpassed population growth, and all the ‘game changers’ (SIFC, $6 trillion mineral wealth, corporate farming, crypto, and geopolitical rents) have fizzled out. Expectedly, in comes yet another game changer — the ‘China model’.

I cannot speak for others, but if it were up to me, I’d start implementing this model tomorrow. I assume, though, that once the enthusiastic folks in power circles come to grips with what it really implies, they’ll discard it immediately.

The writer is an economist. His current research focuses on long-term analyses of the various issues plaguing Pakistan’s economy, economic reforms and the history of economic thought.

shahid.mohmand@gmail.com

X: @ShahidMohmand79

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

There is no single formula for good parenting. Every child is different. Even newborn babies have different temperaments: some are calm, while others are difficult to settle. Genetics plays a role, as does the environment in which a child grows. Parents and family have an enormous influence, but as children grow, teachers, friends, school, social media, and life experiences increasingly shape who they become. It would be unfair to blame parents alone when a teenager develops mental health or behavioural problems, becomes violent, uses drugs or takes other dangerous paths. Nevertheless, positive parenting can have a powerful influence.

Research on parenting styles broadly describes four approaches: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and neglectful. Authoritative parenting is characterised by warmth, support and structure while fostering autonomy. These parents give teenagers enough independence to make decisions with reasonable rules and boundaries. Authoritarian parents tend to control their children, enforce strict rules and rely more on punishment than problem-solving. Permissive parents are loving and responsive but place few demands on their children, with few boundaries or clear expectations. Neglectful parents are emotionally distant and provide little supervision, guidance, or support.

Adolescence (10 to 19 years) is a time of major physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. For some, it is a roller-coaster ride; for others, it is a relatively balanced experience. Adolescents begin to identify themselves as individuals separate from their parents. They form their own self-image, seek privacy and become increasingly influenced by their peers. At the same time, the parts of the brain involved in judgement, impulse control and understanding long-term consequences are still developing. This is where the challenge of parenting a teenager is particularly evident. They may act like adults but are not adults yet. Supervision is necessary, though it should allow them to feel liberated rather than suffocated. They may not like their parents’ interference but still need their physical and emotional support.

Parenting a teenager is a balancing act.

Making rules, providing structure and routine, and setting boundaries are all important. Involving teenagers when making rules and allowing them to voice their concerns helps build their self-confidence. If they break rules, discussions should follow. Simply lecturing them and pointing out their mistake won’t produce positive results. Listening to them does not mean agreeing with everything they say or giving up parental authority. It tells them that their thoughts and feelings matter and makes it more likely that they will approach their parents if they face a serious problem.

Crucially, parents should know their teenagers’ friends, where they are going and what they are doing, including in the online world, while also giving their offspring more freedom as they demonstrate increasing responsibility. Clothes, hairstyles, music and other harmless choices are often part of developing an identity and fitting in with friends. Avoiding unnecessary confrontation over these matters may make it easier to be firm when parental intervention really matters, such as with drugs, violence, safety or other risky be­­ha­viour. We cannot al­­ways protect our children from making mistakes or wrong decisions. But rather than covering up their mistakes or immediat­ely rescuing them from the consequences, it is important that they are helped in understanding the difference between right and wrong so that they can make better choices in the future.

Finally, parents instil values most effectively by being role models. Practising what is important to us is often more powerful than repeatedly telling our children what they should do. We cannot teach respect by humiliating them, honesty by being dishonest ourselves, or self-control by losing our temper. Teenagers may appear rebellious and sometimes reject what we teach them, but what they observe at home stays with them long after adolescence is over.

Parenting a teenager is therefore a balancing act. They need independence but also boundaries, privacy but also supervision, freedom but also responsibility. Perhaps parents’ job during these years is not to make every decision for them, but gradually to teach them how to make good decisions for themselves. The goal of parenting is not simply to raise an obedient teenager, but to raise a responsible, compassionate and independent adult.

The writer is a paediatrician at AKUH.

X: @kishwarenam

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

Little do these irredentists know that goi­ng by that logic Afghanistan has remained part of the Maurya and Mughal empires, while Sikhs, under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had advanced up to Peshawar in 1834. Sub­sequently, the British and Afghans kept sparring over territories across British India and the Afghan frontier, resulting in three Anglo-Afghan wars.

The frontier between British India and Afghanistan was formalised in 1893 throu­­gh the Durand Line Agreement between Emir Abdur Rahman of Afghanistan and Sir Hen­ry Mortimer Durand, foreign secretary of British India. In fact, it was Emir Abdur Rah­­man who wanted to formalise Afghan­istan’s borders both with Russia and British India.

Abdur Rahman requested the British In­­dian government to delineate the border bet­­ween the two states. He specifically req­uested Mortimer Durand to lead the mission. Following the agreement, joint commissions demarcated the border over several years and thereafter, several treaties were concluded. Each reaffirmed both parties’ commitments to respecting the boundary.

Afghan irredentism has kept emerging with regularity.

During the course of demarcation, Afghanistan gained territory not only from British India but also from Russia and Iran.

As a legatee state of British India, Pakis­tan inherited the border agreement as per the customary international law principle of uti possidetis juris (new states inherit pre-existing borders). However, Afghanistan’s representative cast the sole dissenting vote against Pakistan’s inclusion in the UN. Tho­ugh that negative vote was removed after a few weeks, the bad blood of Afghan irredentism continued to plague bilateral ties.

A Loya Jirga declared all previous agreements regarding the international boundary invalid in July 1949, followed by border skirmishes and diplomatic stand-offs. Afghan forces entered Pakistani territory and were repelled after six days. Afghanistan kept providing political and financial support to Pakhtunistan-oriented elements in the 1950s while Afghan prime minister Mohammad Daoud condemned Pakistan’s One Unit arrangement, promising Afghan government support to Pakhtuns in Pakistan. Afghan mobs violated Pakistan’s diplomatic missions at Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Afghan troops in disguise, along with anti-Pakistan tribesmen, entered Bajaur in September 1960 under the direction of prime minister Daoud. Local tribesmen and Frontier Corps scouts initially resisted their advance while regular Pakistani forces, including air force and artillery, beat back Afghan troops, souring relations till 1963.

After the deposition of King Zahir Shah by Daoud in 1973, Afghan intervention in Pakistan became more brazen. Afghanistan openly supported pro-Pakhtunistan elements. Afghanistan under Sardar Daoud also remained a veritable support base for the Baloch insurgency. Despite maximum support to Afghans in their freedom struggle during the Soviet invasion (1979-89), Afghan irredentism kept emerging with metronomic regularity, irrespective of the regime in power.

From 1996 to 2001, Taliban-controlled Af­­ghanistan kept harbouring terrorist org­a­n­i­s­­ations including Al Qaeda, ETIM, and IMU. These groups influenced Pakistan’s ex-Fata region as well. The armed groups based in Afghan territory kept conducting cross-border at­­tacks against Pakis­­­tan from 2002 to 2006, encouraging the rise of terrorist entities like TTP. When Pak­istan fin­ally started fencing its border in 2017, Afghan troops targeted Pakistani forces at Torkham, repeating similar actions at Parachinar, Chaman, Bajaur and Chitral.

Pakistan had welcomed the Taliban regime after the 2021 US withdrawal in good neighbourly spirit, offering humanitarian and economic support at a time when most of the world was treating it as a pariah regime. The Taliban regime in turn gave impetus to anti-Pakistan terrorists like the TTP holed up in Afghanistan. In 2021, terrorist incidents saw a 42 per cent rise, owing to the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the subsequent release of hardened militants from various Afghan jails. From 128 terrorist incidents in 2021 to over 1,200 in 2025, there has been a steady rise in Taliban-regime enabled terrorist violence in Pakistan.

Despite continued positive engagement by Pakistan, the Taliban regime has displayed obduracy and non-cooperation on the counterterrorism front by using terrorism as a low-cost option for leverage.

The writer holds a PhD from Nust.

rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

Over the course of the day, the government kept signalling it was contemplating governor’s rule or imposing emergency in KP, with a meeting between the prime minister and president announced in this regard. Meanwhile, senior opposition leaders set strict terms for possible talks with the government, which they announced at a press conference after a multiparty meeting. It also appeared that the PTI had prepared itself mentally for extreme consequences, with its interim chairman and a senior leader directly addressing the government on the possibility of special administrative measures being imposed in KP, warning that such an action would not resolve issues and only benefit “non-democratic powers”.

The prime minister sought counsel from his allies in the PPP, with a meeting between him and the president on Thursday evening, concluding with a decision to talk to the opposition on Friday. The prime minister was earlier slated to take the president into confidence regarding the political and security climate, including the possibility of emergency or governor’s rule in KP. It may be recalled that the PPP had also been invited to the opposition multiparty moot, but it did not attend. After the multiparty meeting, the opposition leaders in the National Assembly and Senate sounded defiant, even angry. NA opposition leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai, who had just days ago been invited by the prime minister for talks, ruled out meeting the latter in the Prime Minister’s Office or PM House in an uncharacteristically terse statement to the media, even calling the chief executive “illegitimate”. The Senate opposition leader, Raja Nasir Abbas, spoke in a similar vein, saying, “We are fully prepared to hold dialogue and correct the situation, but this will be without any conditions. If anyone thinks that they will hold a dagger to our necks, then such a thing will never be accepted.”

Only the latter is expected to join the Friday talks. It seems that a confrontation could still be avoided if the jailed PTI founder is granted some time in hospital and visits from his lawyers and family. Both those things had already been ordered by the Supreme Court in August. To think that the government would rather push out an elected government than grant a single prisoner some facilities does not square up rationally. As the side holding the cards, it bears greater responsibility. Likewise, the PTI should also weigh its options judiciously, instead of reaching directly for another direct confrontation. It can only be hoped that sense prevails between now and Sunday. The country cannot afford more upheaval.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

The fact is that American military bases in the Middle East offer only an illusion of security. In reality, they have been a source of instability. Not only have these facilities been used to destabilise and occupy regional states — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc — they also put targets on the countries that host them. The fantasy of the American security umbrella was very quickly shattered for the Gulf states when Iranian missiles targeted them, as Tehran claimed that the attacks against it were launched from these US bases. Following the example of its departure from Iraq, the US must further reduce its military footprint in the Middle East. It is by no means a global policeman, and its military forays have only resulted in chaos in the region. Instead, the people of the region — the Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and other nations — should be able to work out a mutual security structure based on non-aggression. The age of empire and Cold War calculations is over. Sovereign states of the Middle East can decide their fate for themselves, and do not need powerful external patrons to ‘protect’ them.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

Punjab deserves credit for acting earlier this year. Its pre-smog crackdown on construction dust, waste and crop burning, brick kilns and vehicle emissions was a welcome shift from reactive governance. But the latest assessment reinforces the point made then: temporary drives will not be enough. Ozone cannot be reduced by targeting dust alone. The government must cut the precursor gases that create it, particularly nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. That means rigorous vehicle emissions testing, cleaner fuels, stronger industrial controls, reliable public transport and enforcement against open burning. Lahore also needs continuous monitoring that separately tracks ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants, with readings and enforcement data made public. Agricultural residue management must be supported with affordable alternatives to burning, while industries and kilns should face sustained compliance checks. Urban planning, traffic policy and energy use must also be treated as air quality policy. The province must recognise that Lahore’s pollution emergency does not end when the winter haze lifts. Clean air requires permanent policy, transparent enforcement and measurable reductions in emissions.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026

Even without debating which worldview is accurate — if any — we can agree on a few truths. First, Pakistan was born through the will and struggle of its people. Second, the decision to create Pakistan was achieved and affirmed through their votes. And finally, Pakistan was brought into being through a process that can, arguably, be considered democratic.

In essence, the establishment of Pakistan was people-centric. And when the ‘people’ in question share a single culture, language, history, and geography, it becomes easy to categorise them as a monolithic community with a singular identity. However, when a nation comprises diverse ethnic groups with distinct cultures and histories running parallel to one another, neatly situated in separate regions of a land seeking to unite, the mechanics of political representation necessarily change.

Unlike a single monolithic community represented by a unitary voice, multiple distinct communities seeking union often have separate representatives, at least initially, to protect their specific interests within the broader polity. The union is not the merging of a single people, but a voluntary arrangement among distinct communities with shared goals. To achieve this, these communities, through their representatives, discuss, negotiate, and agree on the union’s dynamics, defining which powers are transferred to the central state and which remain local.

Commentators frequently overlook the foundational premise of the nation itself.

This process transfers sovereignty from individual communities to a united entity that becomes greater than the sum of its parts, while protecting regional rights and identities. The goal of such a union is a better shared future; unity is seen as offering greater benefits than division. This fusion of distinct groups into a singular national framework is the essence of entering into a social contract.

Pakistan, which is home to diverse ethnicities and communities, is said to have entered into precisely this type of union right after independence. For many, that social contract was earlier epitomised by the Lahore Resolution of 1940; for others, it was crystallised in the 1973 Constitution. Whichever document one examines, the formal recognition and celebration of diversity are recurring themes.

Pakistan was always intended to be pluralistic, with communities coming together to pool their resources and cede certain freedoms for the collective good. Pakistan came into being for them, not despite them. Abdul Wali Khan articulated well the vision of what Pakistan could be, noting that despite their distinct identities, the federating units were akin to “flowers with their distinct colours and fragrance” that “blend into a bouquet, manifesting their unity in diversity”. Ultimately, the country’s founding idea is rooted in protecting its people, their cultures, languages, and rights. That is what it ought to be, and whether anyone likes it or not, this is what it was always meant to be.

Why is this discussion so critical today? Because when commentators debate whether creating more provinces is necessary for a prosperous Pakistan, whether local governments need to be strengthened, or whether addressing the missing persons issue is key to winning hearts and minds, they frequently overlook the foundational premise of the nation itself. This premise is intrinsically linked to the people’s will and aspirations. As with any major decision, altering provincial boundaries, whether by creating fewer or more provinces or restructuring existing ones, must remain a choice driven directly by the people whose goals are bound to Pakistan’s genesis. Similarly, the people must decide the role of local governments, and the resolution of the missing persons crisis must be as great a priority as the people make it.

If you remove the popular will from this decision-making process, you strike at the core of Pakistan’s founding identity. You not only carve up administrative boundaries and dismiss popularly held convictions, but also dismember the very vision articulated in the 1940 Resolution, codified in the 1973 Constitution, and reaffirmed through the 18th Amendment.

Democracy is neither a luxury that Pakistan cannot afford nor is it a failed concept. If anything, when allowed to function, democratic governance is the single thread that has kept this federation together throughout its turbulent history. It maintains the vital link between the state and the populace that gave it birth. If new administrative units are to be carved out or other consequential decisions to be taken, those decisions belong exclusively to the public, not to self-appointed arbiters who claim to know better than the citizens themselves.

After all, armies did not create Pakistan; the people’s vote did. War tacticians did not envision Pakistan; politicians, lawyers, and civilians did. A war did not lead the nation to independence; a barrister did. Consequently, the bond between the Pakistani state and its citizens is as intrinsic and consequential as water is to fish, instruments are to musicians, and ‘national interest’ is to our armed forces.

If you remove the people from decision-making, you strip away the soul of the country. What remains is merely a land without a people, a people without a voice, and a country without a purpose, with nothing left but despair.

The writer is a lawyer based in Karachi.

basil.nabi@gmail.com

X: @basilnabi

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

Not too far away, Nepal experienced a horrific disaster in August. The Himalayan nation endured one of its worst catastrophes when a huge mass of glacial ice and rock collapsed down a slope in the Himalayas near the Langtang region. Within half an hour, it caused an unprecedented surge — as high as nine metres — in the Bhote Koshi/Trishuli river system. Over 1,400 people died. Thousands more went missing. A month later, a massive section of the mountainside collapsed into the swollen Kali Gandaki River after days of heavy rain, sending enormous quantities of soil, rock and debris into the water. This wave of floods and landslides caused at least two dozen deaths.

Pakistan, China, India, Nepal, and Bhutan lie along the axis of disaster — the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) mountain system, also referred to as the ‘Third Pole’ because of its massive concentration of ice and glaciers. These water towers of Asia feed 10 major river systems and support the livelihoods of over two billion people in the region. Ironically, these mountains also spawn hydro-climatic disasters in the region. This explains the vulnerability of Pakistan’s highlands, as the Indus and other rivers flowing into the country draw water from these majestic mountains. The Nepal tra­gedy should be viewed as an early war­­ning for Pakistan, especially for areas located in the highly fragile Hindu Kush, Karakoram and western Himal­ayan region. The phenomenon bears a stark resemblance to the relatively smaller-scale flash floods that occur almost yearly in the mountains of GB and KP.

In its August 2026 update, the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission warned that it had identified 131 potentially dangerous glacial lakes, most of them in GB and KP. The number of unfrozen PDGLs rose from 40 to 105 within a month due to higher temperatures. These findings reinforce the ominous report of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Its assessment of the HKH region identified 25,614 glacial lakes across major river basins. The report also highlighted the risks linked to moraine-dammed lakes near retreating glaciers.

The Nepal tragedy should be seen as a warning for Pakistan.

These manifestations cannot be solely attributed to climate change, as human intervention is aggravating the impact of natural processes. The cryosphere’s health depends on several factors, including forests, vegetation, and soil stability. As forests vanish, hilly slopes are exposed and the runoff from rainwater and glacial melt increases. Flash floods become more violent and tend to carry larger amounts of debris.

A study supported by the ICIMOD revealed that approximately 9,288 acres of forest were lost in Chitral between 1992 and 2009. The annual rate of deforestation accelerated from 0.14 per cent in 1992-2000 to 0.54pc in 2000-2009. Deforestation is an equally alarming trend in GB, where the forest cover has declined to 615,798 acres, comprising only 3.57pc of the total area.

Population growth compounds environmental pressures. GB’s population was listed at around 881,000 in the 1998 census. By 2023, it had increased to some 1.5 million people. Similarly, Chitral recorded a population of about 516,000 in 2023. Demographic pressure amid weak land regulation has led to unregulated settlements in the dry beds of flood nullahs. A growing population increa­ses the demand for land, which is sca­rce on mountain terraces and in narrow valleys. Dry nullahs are often mistaken for wasteland and used to build houses, which eventually collapse under the wrath of unforeseen gushing floods.

In July 2026, Suparco highlighted the serious challenge of relentless settlement expansion along a natural glacial lake-fed stream near Gilgit city. Satellite imagery comparing construction in 2023 to that of a decade earlier indicated the rapid expansion of settlements along this natural stream. Suparco is alarmed that the narrowed channels may not safely carry high flows.

The Nepal tragedy needs careful analysis to understand the parallels with the vulnerability of our cryosphere. Disaster managers should treat the catastrophe as an early warning. Residential and commercial development along mountain riverbanks, as well as deforestation in the watershed, should be strictly prohibited to avert human tragedy.

The writer is a senior adviser on water governance at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

naseer_memon@sdpi.org

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

A recent book by Simon Hall — Three Revolutions: Russia, China and Cuba (2025) — examines the genesis of their social upheavals. Interestingly, he links them to three writers (all American) who happened to be in the right place at the right time: John Reed, who in 1917 witnessed the ignition of the Russian Revolution; Edgar Snow, who met Mao and those who had survived the gruelling Long March of 1934-35; and Herbert Matthews, a New York Times correspondent, who in 1957 wriggled into Cuba and watched Fidel Castro’s underfunded but determined bid to depose Gen Batista. The three wrote accounts of their experiences and interaction with leaders, especially Lenin, Mao and Fidel Castro. They provided authentic, corrective insights into the social cataclysms that continue to be misunderstood by the West.

In 1917, Reed sees the storming of the czar’s Winter Palace in Petrograd (now St Petersburg). Looters are prevented from despoiling the palace’s treasures and opulent furnishings by “self-appointed sentinels”, who shout: “Comrades! Don’t take anything! This is the property of the people!” Another diligent sailor guarding the Winter Palace refuses entry to a new provisional government minister and the city’s mayor. “What will you do?” the two unarmed civilians ask him. The burly sailor replies: “We will spank you, and if necessary, shoot you!”

On meeting Lenin, Reed notices that he “looks through you with those terrible eyes … of being intensely interested”. Reed’s book Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) quotes Trotsky’s recollection of how Lenin, on Oct 10, 1917, scribbled a call for armed insurrection “hastily … with the gnawed end of a pencil on a sheet of paper from a child’s notebook ruled in squares”.

Internecine conflicts have replaced revolutions.

Lenin’s “sealed train” journey, from Switzerland across Germany and Finland to Russia, was more comfortable than the privations of the Long March. Of the 100,000 troops and party stalwarts who started from Jiangxi, only 6,000 or so reached Yan’an, 9,000 kilometres away. Edgar Snow first met Mao in 1936. He described him as a “gaunt, rather Lincolnesque figure … with a face of intellectual shrewdness”. He attributes Mao’s genius to “his uncanny ability to embody the demands of millions of his fellow citizens — above all, the peasantry”.

Snow converted memories of a three-month stay in China into a book — Red Star over China (1937). It had an immeasurable impact, even in Washington’s highest circles. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, H. Ickes, remarked presciently that “any people that can do what the Red Army did during the Long March and after” were “positively invincible”.

Simon Hall’s inclusion of the Cuban revolution of 1956-59 may appear surprising until one reads how Castro achieved it. Arrested by Gen Batista’s soldiers, Castro’s life is spared by a compassionate lieutenant who tells his troops: “Don’t shoot. You can’t kill ideas”. Castro is tried and sentenced to 15 years in jail. In court, he makes a defiant spe­ech: “I do not fear prison[.] Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”

Batista made the mistake of granting Castro an early am­­nesty. Castro repaid the favour by returning to Cuba from exile in Mexico. In 1956, he landed in Granma — “a creaking, leaking leisure yacht”. It was less “a landing than a shipwreck”. Harassed by Batista’s soldiers, Castro hid in the Sierra Maestra mountains — the commander of “two men, a couple of rifles and 120 rounds of ammunition”. There, he is joined by his brother Raúl, who brought five guns. Castro says, with bravado: “That makes seven. We have won the war!”

Herbert Matthews interviewed Castro in his Sierra hideout, writing afterwards: “He has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba [because] he is an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage, and of remarkable qualities of leadership.” Within three years, Castro toppled the US-supported Gen Batista.

In the 21st century, internecine conflicts have replaced revolutions. Autocracies may blindfold eyes that dare to see. Revolutions, though, like tsunamis, are unpredictable. They do not wait for submissive activists who, in Lenin’s words, sit in “armchair ideas” plotting “armchair action”.

The writer is an author.

www.fsaijazuddin.pk

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

The finance ministry is helping arrange resources for the refineries and the newly privatised PIA, as well as moving along the commitments for the Reko Diq project. A meeting between the finance minister and officials from the US Exim Bank was wrongly interpreted by many as an effort by the government to borrow on behalf of the newly privatised PIA for aircraft procurement. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. Meanwhile, March saw a spectrum auction, setting the stage for the rollout of 5G telecommunications in Pakistan; unlike the last auction in 2021, which saw a lacklustre response, three large telecoms participated and picked up spectrum at a price tag of $500 million.

So things are finally beginning to move on the structural front. Obviously, it is too early to call the results, but if the envisioned changes behind these actions bear fruit, reform momentum can certainly start to build. There are a few things to be mindful of, however.

Consider the refinery upgradation plan. In a recent interaction with journalists and industry leaders, the petroleum minister allowed himself to express some annoyance that Pakistan’s refineries can only handle “the sweetest grades of crude”. This means they are using the most basic technology in their sector. His point was to underline the importance of the upgradation policy, and he emphasised that after the upgrades, Pakistan could also become an exporter of refined products.

If the new rules and policy succeed in getting the refiners to do what they have not done in the past 20 years, that will be a big, positive step.

Fair enough. But of the four refineries that have submitted upgradation plans, only one has the books to bear the cost. That one is Attock Refinery. The other three — National Refinery, Cynergico, and Pakistan Refinery Ltd — will struggle to raise the funds, given their books. Between the four, upgrades worth $4.2 billion have been announced. ARL’s plan is worth $600m and comes to around 1.5 times its (real) equity, which makes the plan realistic. For the others, the figures are seven to 25 times their (real) equity, which leaves one wondering about their financing plans.

ARL could potentially put up 30 per cent of its equity share for the project from its own cash holdings, and the remainder would be 2.9 times its EBITDA, which is manageable. It might also need to support NRL’s financing since it owns a 25pc stake in the latter. But the other refiners will need support from multilateral lenders or an Exim bank to arrange resources for their plans. This was one reason the finance minister met officials from the US Exim Bank: to help arrange the resources the refiners, PIA, and the Reko Diq project will require. As of now, there is no reason to believe that this will create any public liabilities for the country.

The refineries have been given the option to sign up for a ‘Refinery Upgradation Account’ ratified by the cabinet in August. The fund has withdrawal rules, including a requirement that projects be completed within five years, with incentives for early completion, penalties for late completion, and sales tax exemption for upgradation equipment. The rules are meant to prevent a repeat of the alleged misuse of the so-called deemed duty in the Musharraf years — when refiners were given an incentive to build stocks and they allegedly took the incentive but did not build any stock. That episode was documented in the Justice Rana Bhagwandas Judicial Commission report of 2009. This time, the funds raised from the incentives will be maintained in an account operated by the ministry, and the refiners will be able to withdraw only after showing compliance with the terms of use of this fund.

If the new rules and policy succeed in getting the refiners to do what they have not done in the past 20 years, that will be a big, positive step. But much hinges on whether they can raise the financing, given the scale of the projects they have announced.

Likewise, the telcos stepped forward to participate in the 5G spectrum auction after the last auction saw lukewarm participation in 2021. The bids were at or near the reserve price for most bands. Industry’s demand was that they be allowed to pay in rupees, at an exchange rate fixed at the time of the auction, and to stretch their payments over a longer period of time at Kibor plus 3pc. These concessions were granted. In return, they must introduce 5G in Islamabad first, then expand to 10 cities nationwide by 2030, and increase minimum speeds from 20mbps on 4G to 50mbps on 5G. In addition, some telcos have announced investment plans to expand their business base in Pakistan, with Jazz leading the pack through a $1bn investment plan over the next three years.

These are significant steps, including the one we have not been able to discuss — the introduction of wheeling in the power sector. If they go through as envisaged, the impact will be manifest, with greater resilience in our energy supply chain against international shocks, faster communications, and more flexibility in power-provisioning arrangements. Let’s hope for the best, but remain vigilant about the pitfalls as these plans move towards implementation.

The writer is a business and economy journalist.

khurram.husain@gmail.com

X: @khurramhusain

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

That requires breaking the banks’ dominance. Pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, retail investors, and eventually, foreign investors must become bigger participants. They need both access and incentives to hold and trade rupee securities. Secondary-market liquidity is equally important. Primary dealers should have incentives to make markets rather than merely participate in government auctions. The proposed review of the primary-dealer framework and securities-lending facility could help. The IMF should push this logic further. The government must borrow less from commercial banks. Reducing bank borrowing would force greater reliance on actual market financing, creating room for banks to lend to productive private activity.

The market should also be broadened beyond government debt. The government could require SOEs to raise at least one-third of all future local currency borrowing through bonds. This would create more issuers, diversify instruments and maturities, and expose SOE borrowing to greater market scrutiny. Demand can be boosted through targeted tax incentives for investors holding local currency bonds issued by SOEs and private companies. Such incentives should encourage longer-term investment. Further, transparently priced government securities across maturities can provide benchmarks against which private companies price their own debt. Over time, this could reduce the economy’s overreliance on bank lending. That said, the government must avoid treating the bond market reform as a way to finance itself more easily. A deeper market should reduce refinancing risks, improve monetary policy transmission and redirect savings to productive investment. The measure of success cannot be the number of bonds issued. It must be who buys them, how actively they trade, how liquid the market becomes and whether businesses have better access to long-term capital.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

Pakistan’s campaign against fraudulent call centres must continue. While genuine call centres and tech businesses must not be harassed, outfits involved in shady dealings and questionable financial transactions must be investigated and prosecuted. And while rounding up employees and small fry associated with these criminal rings may disrupt their operations, it is the masterminds behind these concerns that need to be brought to justice. The NCCIA head has said that “indiscriminate and vigorous operations” will be carried out against those involved in cyber fraud. It is hoped that the state keeps a vigilant eye on those engaged in these rackets as they use the latest technology to perpetuate fraud.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

Seajacks by pirate gangs had subsided around the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. But, fuelled by political upheaval, poverty and aid cuts, piracy is back with a vengeance. Recent instances suggest that, due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, this route needs amplified transnational patrolling. Clearly, this year’s tally of over 100 ships struck and 40 hijacked with 15 attacks in April alone confirms that a prime trade passage has become perilous. We cannot lose more time. An international naval cover, comprising satellite information, emergency services, and a tracking dashboard effective in strife-torn waterways for navigational safety, is vital. In short, only a modern maritime protection framework alongside contingency plans can prevent future shocks. Meanwhile, local labour rights bodies must protect sailors from the coercive policies of shipping companies and other patrons. Global trade relies on mariners. They must have the power to choose secure routes without fear of repercussions. Additionally, the government is obligated to provide compensation to affected families and to ensure that no distressed citizen faces official apathy.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

During the same period, the head of Mossad, Israel’s main intelligence agency, made two trips to the country to apparently coordinate military operations. And last week, while 77 nations boycotted the Israeli prime minister’s speech at the UN General Assembly, the UAE delegation remained seated — a clear show of solidarity with the Zionist state.

Since joining the Abraham Accords in 2020, the UAE has not only established diplomatic relations with Israel but has gone much further, elevating the relationship into a de facto alliance — even as the Israeli state was carrying out a genocidal war in Gaza. That relationship deepened as the US, along with Israel, imposed an unprovoked war on Iran.

The extraordinary relationship between the two countries marks a developing unholy alliance in a rapidly changing regional order, as America’s war on Iran drags on. The UAE has reportedly carried out its own strikes on Iran and has also borne the brunt of retaliatory strikes — with devastating effect — despite the deployment of the Iron Dome air defence system, run by Israeli military personnel.

Its close military cooperation with Israel has drawn the UAE directly into the war on Iran.

It is the first time this highly advanced system has been deployed outside Israel and the US, signalling the critical role of the Emirates in a potential Israeli-led regional defence alliance. It is also the first Arab-Israeli relationship to acquire real military and industrial substance. And this Israel-UAE nexus goes beyond the ongoing Iran war: the UAE appears to be a critical part of Israel’s plan to build what Netanyahu calls the “hexagon of alliances”.

That idea was pitched by the Israeli prime minister early this year. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Feb 22, 2026, days before the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Netanyahu presented his vision of creating “a hexagon of alliances around or within the Middle East” — a bloc against what he described as the “radical Shia and emerging Sunni axis”. He named four members — Israel, India, Greece and Cyprus — and left the remaining slots (Arab, African and Asian states) unnamed. But it is widely assumed that the Emirates is one of the six, given its close diplomatic and defence ties with Israel.

Netanyahu also pointed to intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism cooperation with India as the core of the project. Modi’s February visit produced a Special Strategic Partnership between the two countries, which have long cooperated on defence and intelligence. Israel is one of India’s largest arms suppliers. The UAE, too, has built close defence ties with New Delhi. All three are part of the four-nation I2U2 grouping, alongside the US, and of IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. This web of alliances, bound together by bilateral defence relationships, is shaping the emerging security landscape in West Asia and beyond.

Although the Israeli-proposed hexagon alliance has not yet taken formal shape, it is widely seen as a potential counter to the Makkah alliance — which Israel portrays, wrongly, as a ‘Sunni alliance’. Netanyahu has repeatedly called Turkiye a greater threat than Iran and a major challenge to his ‘Greater Israel’ ambition. Against this background, the growing Israel-UAE diplomatic and defence cooperation is alarming.

Over the past few years, the UAE has drifted away from its Gulf allies on a range of regional and foreign policy issues, above all by widening its differences with Saudi Arabia. The Emirates is accused of arming and financing a separatist group in strife-torn southern Yemen, bringing the UAE into conflict with Riyadh. It is also widely believed to be arming and funding an armed group involved in Sudan’s civil war, one accused of mass atrocities. And it backs Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia recognised only by Israel — while every other Arab state supports a united Somalia.

A few months ago, at the height of the Iran war, the Emirates pulled out of Opec, the Saudi-led oil cartel, severely damaging the organisation. Its close military cooperation with Israel has drawn the Emirates directly into the war on Iran, endangering its own security in the process. Any participation in an Israeli-proposed alliance could prove extremely destabilising for the region.

Pakistan’s own relations with the Emirates have hit a low over the past few years. Early this year, the UAE withdrew a $3 billion deposit from the State Bank of Pakistan, and once-close ties have become significantly strained. With a large Pakistani workforce in the Emirates, the shift has put Pakistan in a very difficult position, which requires a delicate balancing act.

The widening regional divide — in the middle of the Iran war, Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza and its military actions in Lebanon — is extremely troubling. Israel’s idea of a ‘hexagon alliance’ that also includes India is dangerous for Pakistan’s security, particularly as Israel and India are already tied in a strategic relationship.

It is certainly not good news for the Middle East and the wider region, which is being rocked by America’s unending war on Iran. The situation has become much more complicated with the escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Last week, the military chiefs of the three allied countries met to discuss the deteriorating situation, and there is talk that Article 5 of the alliance — under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all — could be activated. Any such move could draw Pakistan directly into the conflict. With a resolution to the Iran war still far off, an expansion of the conflict could render the situation far more explosive. Against this backdrop, the unholy alliance between Israel and the UAE could further destabilise the region, with far-reaching implications.

The writer is an author and journalist.

zhussain100@yahoo.com

X: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026

Anatol Lieven offered an uncomfortable explanation more than a decade ago in Pakistan: A Hard Country. Writing about Pakistan’s bureaucracy, he observed that “The bureaucracy acts as an agency of distributing patronage rather than good government”. He was making a broader point than simply accusing officials of corruption: formal institutions themselves can be shaped by patronage, personal relationships and competing interests.

The result is a paradox. The machinery of the state can be weak and dysfunctional, yet the networks around it can make the system remarkably resilient. Those same networks, however, can make the state harder for ordinary citizens to navigate. Lieven’s observation remains relevant because the problem citizens encounter today is not simply corruption. It is the growing difficulty of dealing with the state itself.

Getting a document attested from the foreign affairs ministry can mean hours in queues, repeated visits, uncertainty about requirements and the possibility of another objection from another official. When a legitimate administrative process becomes sufficiently difficult, the middleman finds an opportunity. And when the middleman becomes almost indispensable, corruption has fertile ground in which to grow.

The answer to every administrative failure cannot be another layer of control.

I know something about this from personal experience. Last year, I wrote to the foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, about the immense difficulties you­ng Pakistanis were facing in getting documents attested. I asked for a system that would allow citizens to obtain a legitimate government service with dignity, without spending hours standing in the heat or cold. The response was brief: the authorities were aware of the problem and had already taken steps to improve the situation.

Unfortunately, my experience since then suggests that the problem has not disappeared.

My own family has encountered similar problems elsewhere in the system. Two adult daughters were once stopped at Lahore airport and questioned for almost two hours before an international trip, including being asked why they were travelling without a male relative.

On another occasion, the Foreign Office refused to attest an affidavit prepared for a university abroad because, I was told, both parents had to consent even though the applicant was an adult. The embassy of the country concerned eventually accepted the affidavit without the Foreign Office attestation.

More recently, a newborn’s passport became another bureaucratic journey. The father, living abroad, had to fly back to Pakistan because his presence was considered necessary before the passport could be issued. Even after the passport was processed, the parents were asked to have their identity documents attested by a Grade-17 officer before collection. These are not extraordinary demands in a country facing war or famine. They concern passports, affidavits and identity documents.

And that is the point. A state does not become stronger by making every legitimate interaction with it more difficult. Nor does every additional verification, signature, attestation or layer of authority necessarily make a system more secure. Sometimes it simply creates another point at which a citizen becomes dependent on an official’s discretion.

We often discuss corruption as though it begins with the person offering money at a counter. But the deeper problem can begin much earlier, when the legitimate route becomes so cumbersome that people start looking for another route.

Lieven’s insight was that the problem is not simply individual dishonesty. It is the way the system itself can operate through patronage, personal rel­a­­tionships and discretion. As he put it, people with even limited power can use it to “turn to their ad­­vantage the workings of the law and the bureaucracy”.

That is why the answer to every administrative failure cannot be another layer of control. A new verification may be introduced to prevent fraud. Another signature may be demanded in the name of security. Another attestation may be added to ensure authenticity. Each may appear reasonable in isolation. Together, they can create a maze in which the honest citizen becomes increasingly dependent on the very system that is supposed to serve them.

Pakistan is a poor country. Its citizens understand that. They do not expect government offices to provide five-star service. But they can reasonably expect something much more basic: when the law gives them a legitimate right, the state should make it reasonably easy to exercise that right. This is the argument I had made in my letter to the foreign minister a year back.

A birth certificate should not become an odyssey. A passport should not require unnecessary suspicion. A document attestation should not require an agent. A citizen should not have to prove, at every counter, that he or she is innocent of some imagined wrongdoing.

The government does not need another committee to discover this. It needs to look at the citizen’s journey through the system and ask a simple question: how many of these steps are actually necessary?

Because corruption is not created only at the counter. Sometimes the conditions for it are created much earlier, by a system that makes a simple, legitimate service unnecessarily difficult.

The writer is a former journalist and strategic communication and public health professional, with experience across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026