A YEAR after Islamabad severed commercial ties with Kabul over security concerns, the border trade disruption is taking a growing toll on KP, where livelihoods, businesses, farm markets, and a large number of workers depend on cross-border commerce. Bilateral trade has fallen by more than 72pc, from $1.3bn in FY25 to $358m in FY26 — which means fewer customers for local shops, lower earnings for farmers, idle trucks, and lost jobs.

KP was already struggling to attract investment and create work amid rising terrorism; the loss of an established market makes recovery harder. The damage is not confined to the province. Farmers and factories in Punjab and Sindh, too, have been hit, and Pakistan’s exports to Central Asia have been badly disrupted.

Afghanistan has long been KP’s natural outlet because of its proximity and the long-standing commercial and tribal networks. Traders built their businesses around moving food, cement, pharmaceuticals, and other goods across the border. Medical tourism, hotels, and other services catering to Afghan visitors are suffering as well. When crossings shut, traders cannot send their goods to distant markets without facing higher costs, finding new buyers, and adapting to unfamiliar commercial conditions.

In fact, most services cannot be shifted at all. Rerouting shipments is not an easy fix. Pakistan’s shortest land routes to Central Asia run through Afghanistan. Alternatives mean longer distances, higher freight costs, and thinner margins. Small enterprises with little financial cushion are the most exposed to prolonged border trade closures.

KP needs expanding markets and productive investment to employ a growing workforce; it cannot afford to lose existing ones before alternatives are in place. Islamabad has valid security concerns — the Taliban must prevent Afghan territory from being used for attacks on Pakistan. But border closures also hurt citizens on both sides, who have nothing to do with Kabul’s policies.

Islamabad must find the right balance between its security priorities and the economic strain on KP’s residents. Sustained efforts to obtain genuine security assurances from Kabul and carefully monitored arrangements for legitimate trade may offer a way to protect both. It should also assess the losses of traders, transporters, and farmers, and help businesses find new markets. The government must protect its people from terrorism without restricting their livelihoods.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

During a recent visit to Borneo island in the Malay archipelago, I came across a shrimp farm on the coast of the rainforest-covered island, run by a Chinese woman entrepreneur. Using a seawater reservoir behind a mangrove forest, she had built a business exporting shrimp around the world.

My mind drifted home to Pakistan’s 1,058-kilometre coastline, along Sindh and Balochistan. Why, I wondered, do we see so little aquaculture of this kind?

I was reminded of a conversation I had with the owner of a hatchery recently established in Gharo in Sindh. He told me that one of his biggest worries was transporting the hatchlings quickly and safely to fish and shrimp farms in Muzaffargarh, Punjab.

The irony struck me. The hatchery is in coastal Sindh, close to the sea and the Indus delta, yet its young fish and shrimp have to travel hundreds of kilometres inland to find farms. I asked him why people were not investing in fish and shrimp farming in Sindh? He did not have a clear answer, except to say that there were not enough investors and the business climate is also not supportive.

But the lack of investors is not really an explanation. It is itself a question.

The problem in rural Sindh may not be a lack of capital, but its concentration — and the failure to create the conditions in which small businesses can grow into industries

Sindh has fertile land, a long coastline and a river, alongside abundant agricultural produce, livestock, fisheries and traditional crafts. Yet much of this potential has not translated into local processing, packaging and cold-chain businesses that could create jobs beyond agriculture. Why did this not happen?

THE AGRARIAN DIVIDE

Economic historian Imran Ali has documented how British canal colonies transformed western Punjab from the late 19th century. Irrigation brought semi-arid land under cultivation, encouraging commercial agriculture and the growth of new settlements and market towns. The colonial project also served revenue, political and military objectives. Regardless of their motives, the economic landscape was transformed.

Sindh too underwent an irrigation revolution, particularly after the Sukkur Barrage opened in 1932. But perhaps the social structure on to which this new agricultural wealth was grafted was different.

Economist Mahmood Hasan Khan points out the growth of small owner-cultivators and market relations in parts of Punjab, while the older landlord-sharecropper structure remained much stronger in Sindh. Economist Akmal Hussain argues that owner-cultivators have greater incentives to invest, potentially generating the savings and demand needed for industrialisation.

Where agricultural income is concentrated in fewer hands, the pattern of investment may be different.

THE CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL

It would, however, be too easy to explain Sindh’s predicament simply by invoking “feudalism.”

Political economist Akbar Zaidi argues that agriculture in Pakistan has undergone a substantial capitalist transformation. Commercialisation and the ‘Green Revolution’ brought capitalist farmers, machinery and wage labour and, in some areas, small manufacturers, skilled workers and service businesses.

Sindh’s sugar mills, cotton ginning and rice milling show that agricultural wealth did become industrial capital. But large enterprises owned by wealthy families are not the same as a broad base of independent businesses. Both represent investment and capitalism, but the latter creates a much wider entrepreneurial class.

A farmer investing in transport, a workshop repairing agricultural machinery or a manufacturer producing spare parts can generate further demand for suppliers, traders and services. Why has this chain remained so weak across much of rural Sindh?

THE CITY AND THE HINTERLAND

Perhaps the problem was never simply the absence of capital. It may have been the concentration of capital and the failure to spread entrepreneurial investment widely enough through its towns and communities.

And then there is Karachi. Economist Kaiser Bengali has described Sindh as having a “dual identity”: Karachi on one side and the rest of the province on the other.

Partition created another rupture. Much of Sindh’s Hindu mercantile and entrepreneurial class migrated to India, while Muslim migrants from different parts of the Subcontinent brought new commercial skills, networks and capital to Karachi. Over the following decades, Karachi became Pakistan’s great port, financial centre and industrial metropolis. For someone from rural Sindh with money to invest, a good education or entrepreneurial ability, Karachi offered far greater opportunities than his own town.

Perhaps herein lies another paradox. Sindh generated considerable wealth at both ends of its economy: agricultural wealth in the countryside and commercial and industrial wealth in Karachi. Yet the economic centres in between remained relatively weak.

BEYOND INDUSTRIAL ESTATES

History, however, can only explain so much. Nearly eight decades have passed since Independence, and we also have to ask what we have done since then. Why have Sukkur, Larkana, Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas, Khairpur, Thatta and Badin not developed stronger clusters of small industry?

Industrial estates and special economic zones have been established or proposed outside Karachi, but infrastructure alone does not create an industrial ecosystem. Regional businesses also need technical training, accessible finance, shared processing and testing facilities, and reliable market connections.

Perhaps the more fundamental question is why we wait for investors instead of creating the conditions that produce investors.

THE MISSING STEP

A recent article by journalist Owais Tohid about thousands of women establishing tiny businesses across rural Sindh provides an interesting clue. These women are raising livestock, stitching clothes, producing handicrafts and running other small businesses with relatively modest amounts of capital.

Perhaps entrepreneurship was never absent. The problem is what happens next. How does a woman employing herself begin employing five or ten other women? How does a workshop become a factory? How does one successful shrimp farm become twenty, surrounded by hatcheries, feed suppliers, cold storage, processors, transporters and exporters?

This brings me back to that hatchery in Gharo. The coastline is there, as are the seawater, the hatchery, the technical knowledge and the market. And yet the hatchlings travel hundreds of kilometres to find the entrepreneurs willing and able to farm them.

Successive governments in Sindh must also bear part of the responsibility. A political economy historically dominated by large landowners may not have had sufficient incentive to create a broad class of independent entrepreneurs.

Industrial estates have been established, but we have rarely pursued industrial development around the natural strengths of individual regions with the persistence it requires: dates in Khairpur, fisheries and aquaculture along the coast, rice in upper Sindh, fruit processing around Mirpurkhas, and livestock and dairy across much of the province.

Nor can poverty alleviation alone be an economic policy. There is an obvious need for social protection in a province where millions remain poor. But cash support, however necessary, cannot by itself create economic mobility. The larger challenge is to create the conditions in which people can move beyond poverty.

A tenant becoming an owner, a woman running a tiny business beginning to employ others, a workshop growing into a factory, or a farmer’s produce being processed and packaged before it leaves the district rather than being sent elsewhere for someone else to add value to it — these are perhaps better measures of economic development.

The challenge for rural Sindh, therefore, may not simply be to find more investors. It is to understand why enterprise has failed to spread despite the province’s considerable natural resources and agricultural wealth, and then to create the conditions in which capital, skills and entrepreneurship can come together.

Ultimately, the measure of development should not merely be how many poor people the state is able to support, but how many people are able to reach a point where they no longer need that support.

The writer is an entrepreneur and President of WWF-Pakistan

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 18th, 2026

WRITING about Pakistan-US ties is like penning literary criticism of a Shakespearean play. One constantly reinterprets and looks for new answers to old questions.

How does one evaluate Pak-US ties under President Donald Trump? Do Trump’s extravagant compliments to Pakistan’s leadership reflect happy relations between the two countries? The short answer is no. American leaders routinely indulge in hyperbole. Add to it the sales pitch of a marketing ‘genius’, and you get Trump’s effusive but effervescent compliments.

Compared to Joe Biden’s time, US-Pakistan ties have no doubt been elevated, but not upgraded. The uptick stems from more than Trump’s bonhomie with Pakistan’s leadership. The relationship is largely a function of his experimental foreign policy. He is reassessing America’s China policy and relations with Russia, rebalancing ties with traditional allies and partners — to America’s advantage — and deprioritising, though not abandoning, the traditional foreign policy establishment’s overweening ambitions to maintain US global primacy. The emphasis is on unilateralism, the naked use of military power, and economic warfare.

This foreign policy stems from his whims, with his politics oriented towards the MAGA movement and the rich class, especially tech billionaires; tariffs used as leverage not only for trade but also for geopolitical gain; and a search for greater market share for America, as well as potential investment and business deals with China and Russia.

Pakistan has been an incidental beneficiary of Trump’s policies, good or bad. It has again tried to play its historical role of rescuer in America’s adventures. It has gained by dramatically enhancing its diplomatic profile in the Middle East and its image in America. Washington appears to appreciate the need to maintain Pakistan’s defence capability for regional stability, especially in South Asia, and to use it as leverage against India.

Pakistan, a populous country and a nuclear power, occupies an important geostrategic position between the subcontinent, Iran, Arabia, Central Asia, Russia, and China. Its strength is an asset, and its weakness a liability. One makes it a useful partner; the other makes it hard to ignore, much less alienate. Washington wants to contain China’s political and economic profile in Pakistan. Alienating it would shut the door on all US influence.

The US benefits from a tangible relationship with Pakistan.

America benefits from a tangible relationship with Pakistan in various areas of cooperation. The Trump administration approved a $686 million upgrade and sustainment package for Pakistan’s F-16 fleet. Separately, a $488m foreign military sales contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman for APG-66 and APG-68 radar engineering and technical support, covering 21 countries, including Pakistan.

Pak-US cooperation is also developing in the economic area, mainly in energy, IT, crypto, agriculture, renewable energy, and critical minerals, where Pakistan is drawing attention as a significant source. America is also the top destination for Pakistan’s exports. The US needs Pakistan’s cooperation to act against transnational terrorists who endanger regional, American, and global security. Counterterrorism cooperation thus continues. Lastly, Washington has always been concerned about a Pakistan-India conflict and will continue to play a crisis management role.

Behind the veneer of Trump’s rhetoric and personalised foreign policy, however, traditional foreign policy seems to be at work, led by China hawk and pro-India Secretary of Sta­te Marco Rubio, which may be circumscribing Pak-US ties. Oth­erwise, how do we explain that neither he, nor the deputy secreta­­ry, nor an under-secretary of state has visited Pakistan? There’s no semblance of a strategic relationship, despite Rubio’s lip service to the idea.

So, is Trump pursuing a dual-track policy, especially regarding the China policy and its derivative India policy, that influences the administration’s approach to Pakistan? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at the ‘real’ China policy when he said in an interview that the relationship with China poses an unprecedented national security challenge. “China is … the biggest economic threat, and they’re the biggest military threat,” he said.

The reality is that Trump hasn’t done anything extraordinary for Pakistan that we might fear losing. Much of his freelance foreign policy will likely depart with him, but the impact on Pak-US ties might be minimal. US-Israeli wars in the Middle East have dented America’s standing in the region, providing a fresh rationale for continued engagement with Pakistan in the post-Trump world.

Bottom line: The relationship with the US is necessary but not indispensable. We should keep it that way to safeguard our strategic autonomy.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

THE new setup in KP is taking shape rapidly and quietly. While everyone seems focused on the collective meltdown in the PTI, the province the party ruled until recently is busy setting up a new structure.

The governor announced his new advisory council within days, while the emergency-stricken districts have been provided with their own administrative machinery. A special emergency has been declared in the former Fata regions as well as Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, and Dera Ismail Khan.

According to the information available in news reports, these regions will now be managed by a new Area Development Secretariat (ADS), which is to be headed by a bureaucrat, Yahya Akhundzada, an additional chief secretary (ACS). It is being reported that he has been given extensive powers akin to those of a cabinet or a provincial government. Along with this, a new council has been formed, consisting of four people from each district to assist him. An additional inspector general (AIG) of police is also part of this council. Most of these members have been selected, with a few refusals; not bad for a week’s worth of work.

At the federal level, a committee headed by Ishaq Dar has been formed to supervise the province. Besides Dar, the committee includes several PML-N stalwarts, mostly from Punjab, such as Rana Sanaullah, Azam Nazeer Tarar, and Attaullah Tarar. However, other members include Amir Muqam from KP and Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui from Karachi.

At times, the plan appears more ambitious than merely addressing terrorism and governance in KP. In the past week, whispers have been heard around Islamabad; well-informed journalists have also appeared on television and suggested that this setup might decide the future of the other provinces as well. If the technocratic cabinets are able to perform well, there is a chance similar setups may be introduced elsewhere. Faisal Vawda, who, too, has much inside news to share, has suggested or hinted at something similar.

This is lent credence by the manner in which the new administration has been installed in KP, where governor’s rule is accompanied by a special setup for the 12 districts; if there were ever to be smaller provinces in the country, these districts could easily take the form of a ‘South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’ province.

At times, the plan appears more ambitious than merely addressing terrorism and governance in KP.

Be that as it may, all these ambitious plans — if there are any — will have to wait until the wrinkles are ironed out in KP. I say this because, from the outside, there seems to be a lack of clarity at the moment.

There is some confusion about how this new setup will work. After all, not only is there a governor now in charge of the province, but there is also a powerful ADS for southern KP. So, will the ADS report to the governor or directly to the federal government? That is a bit unclear at the moment.

This also raises the question of what the ADS’s relationship will be with the provincial bureaucracy. If the ACS and AIG report directly to Islamabad, will this eliminate the need to work with Peshawar entirely?

Journalists from the province say the ADS and the federal government will handle development and security directly. This is why the ADS, according to one colleague, is even being given its own set of finance and planning officials. These officials will be part of the new secretariat.

But what will happen in matters that do not fall under development and security, such as education and health?

That is why some feel that, for the moment, there may still be a need to coordinate with the provincial bureaucracy and thrash out other issues. And if that is the case, it can cause delays and hurdles. After all, red tape and bureaucratic hurdles are routine in the country, but if, in this case, rules need to be figured out or made anew, the delays might be more severe.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, there is confusion over how many issues in this special region will go directly to the prime minister or the provincial setup/governor before being routed to the prime minister. While journalists from KP feel the prime minister and Islamabad will deal with all matters directly, the ADR spokesman said in a television interview that the prime minister would handle issues in which the governor and his team could not address the needs of the 12 districts.

If the prime minister, or rather the federal government, is to look after every issue, will decision-making power go to the Dar-led committee? It is hard to imagine that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will have the time to look into every matter individually. The prime minister also prefers to manage matters through committees. But how efficient will this prove to be? Of course, the assumption is that decision-making will be quick and efficient because it will take place elsewhere, and the committees we see exist in name only.

No doubt, this is always a possibility, but how many governance issues can be managed this way? Development and security decisions can perhaps be handled in this manner, but will there be no other issues? Though one should remain optimistic, I suppose.

However, let me venture to say that if this new technocratic setup proves to be successful and efficient, it might just end up increasing centralisation of decision-making, which is far removed from the idea of local government and service delivery at the people’s doorstep. For residents of the 12 districts, Islamabad and cities beyond are much farther away than Peshawar.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

A WEEK after the federal government imposed governor’s rule and emergency in KP, PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari invited the opposition to engage ‘positively’ with the centre, saying this could lead to their reversal.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari, addressing reporters at a Sunday memorial for the 2007 Karsaz attack on his late mother Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession, spoke about the need for a national effort to address the growing economic crisis, resurgent terrorism, and Pakistan’s increasingly dysfunctional electoral system. But his offer, however well-meaning, stands little chance of leading to a political breakthrough in the current climate. Without concrete confidence-building measures initiated by the ruling parties, the opposition is unlikely to put much faith in mere assurances, given that the centre has crossed a major political red line by deposing an elected provincial government and supplanting it with a setup handpicked by Islamabad.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari seemed to be missing the point when he called the ‘non-functional’ KP chief minister a “coward” who was “not ready to defend his own land”. Whatever his failings, the people of KP had elected him, and the remedy lay with them, not with Islamabad. By forcing him aside, the centre has signalled that it does not need public consensus to do as it pleases. The centre’s dispute with KP, after all, was not about whether terrorism needed confronting, but how. KP had resisted the centre’s approach to fighting terrorism, and the resulting stand-off had stymied any progress. In dismissing the provincial government, the centre had signalled that security policies would be prescribed for the province rather than derived in consultation with it. That bridge has already been burnt.

It is commendable that the PPP chairperson is at least talking about a path back to normalcy, but the PPP is a partner in the very government that imposed governor’s rule. If it wants the decision reversed, it should convince its ally in Islamabad, not ask the opposition to be ‘positive’. It is hoped that the PML-N will also reconsider its position. The latter party would do well to recall that, in 2009, when its government in Punjab was dismissed and governor’s rule imposed, it had itself joined a ‘long march’ on Islamabad to press its demands.

It is unbecoming of that party to have denied its opponents the same right to protest now, when it is in power. It will not be easy to build bridges with the opposition, but the PML-N, more than any other party, has the power to concede some ground to show goodwill. It should take up the National Assembly opposition leader on his offer to engage the jailed PTI chief, and facilitate that effort if it is serious about national reconciliation and a unified response to Pakistan’s crises.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

Mian Dad has spent much of his life ploughing fields on a tractor. He started as a young boy, helping drive a tractor that tilled land for a local landlord in his village in Tamboo, Nasirabad district, Balochistan.

Now, Mian drives the tractor himself, earns just Rs14,000 per month — a little over a third of the provincial minimum wage of Rs37,000. During peak cultivation season, he tells Eos, the work-day can stretch up to 16 hours — double the standard eight hours.

But Mian isn’t complaining. He now makes “a lot more” than what he earned as a tractor helper. It is still not enough, however, to feed his family, including his 11 children. “We look for odd jobs or work for food during the off-season,” he says. “When that doesn’t work, we have to beg.”

For agricultural workers in Balochistan, a lifetime of labour may still not be enough to escape poverty. Debt, unequal sharecropping arrangements and climate shocks can trap entire families in a vicious cycle of dependence

THE BOTTOM RUNG

Mian’s situation is not unusual in a province where poverty remains widespread. An estimated 47 percent of the population in Balochistan lives in poverty, compared with a national average of 28.9 percent, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26.

Poverty is particularly acute in rural districts, where livelihoods depend mostly on agriculture. In a 2025 study by the global not-for-profit Population Council, District Vulnerability Index for Pakistan, 17 Balochistan districts were listed among the 20 most-vulnerable districts in the country. Nasirabad was towards the bottom in both provincial and national lists, ranking 11th most vulnerable out of 31 districts in Balochistan and 13th most vulnerable among the 129 districts assessed nationwide.

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood in Tamboo, Mian’s hometown, which has a population of around 130,000. As elsewhere in Balochistan, agricultural production in Tamboo involves a network of tribal chieftains, landlords, intermediaries known as bothars, farmers, tractor drivers, technicians and sharecroppers.

Workers like Mian Dad occupy the lower rungs of this hierarchy, often putting in long hours to cultivate the land. Locally, they are also referred to as begaar — which refers to a historical practice of forced, unpaid labour that was widely practised during the British era, including in princely states.

In today’s Balochistan, unpaid labour may arise from a lack of alternative employment, obligations linked to debt or, in some cases, pressure arising from tribal and social relationships.

INHERITED DEBT

It can take decades for those starting work as peasants to move up in this hierarchy.

Qadir Naseeb, whose family worked as peasants for generations in the Chattar area of Nasirabad, says his family didn’t have access to clean drinking water. He recently installed a tubewell near his hut. “Before [installing] the tubewell, the women in my family had to filter the water through a cloth to make it drinkable,” he tells Eos.

One of the reasons why upward mobility can take peasants decades, explains local researcher Muhammad Nawaz Khosa, is because they are often caught up in a cycle of debt. “Households often have to rely on interest-based loans to meet everyday expenses as well as the costs associated with cultivating the very land on which they work,” he explains.

In his book Balochistan Ki Nehri Zaraat [Canal-Irrigated Agriculture in Balochistan], Khosa writes that peasants often work as sharecroppers. In such cases, the peasants are responsible for managing production and handling expenses — often financed in the form of loans acquired from the landlord’s bothar.

The eventual harvest is then divided between the landowners and the peasant, with the peasant using his share of the harvest to pay off the loan. If the harvest fails to return a profit, the loss has to be borne by the peasant, leaving him mired in a vicious debt trap.

Such agreements also don’t factor in force majeure — whether it’s a pest attack or floods. In the case of a loss of harvest, the sharecropper has to pay off his debt to the landlord. In some instances, writes Khosa, peasants are also expected to bear the expenses associated with the landlord’s hujra [guest area], a system rooted in longstanding feudal traditions of the region.

This is something that Mian Dad and many others have experienced. Mian had to borrow Rs200,000 following the floods in 2022. The amount equals more than 14 months of his pay. While Mian was repaying the debt, a medical emergency forced him to take on another loan. He says he is now trapped in a cycle of that debt, worried that his future generations will have to work to pay it off.

Parts of Balochistan continue to exhibit forms of bonded labour, particularly within the households and estates of tribal and feudal elites, says Asad Baloch, a researcher who hails from a tribal family. Baloch says this practice has “considerably decreased” in Nasirabad as compared to previous generations. “But yes, remnants of such practices can be found in parts of the province,” he tells Eos.

In rural and remote parts of the province, he explains, the tribal chiefs function not just as cultural leaders, but as economic masters. Impoverished tribesmen often rely on their chiefs for basic survival, protection and mediation.

In some villages, there is a custom where one child from every household has to be in service of the tribal chief. In some cases, individuals work as guards or domestic workers, for minimal wages. Over time, limited economic opportunities and restricted access to education and alternative livelihoods continue to make it difficult for some individuals to pursue other means of earning a living.

RESETTING THE CLOCK

The 2022 floods that pushed Mian Dad into debt were not the first to disrupt the relationship between landlords and agricultural workers in Nasirabad. Dr Abid Mir, a lecturer at Government Degree College, Quetta, says the 2010 floods weakened some landlords’ hold over the families who worked for them.

“Widespread agricultural losses weakened some landlords’ ability to retain regular workers, prompting many peasant families to seek employment elsewhere,” he tells Eos. For some, this opened up the possibility of finding work on their own terms and seeking better education, healthcare and basic amenities for their families.

But the effects of climate-related disasters have been uneven. Families who remained in rural areas continued to face crop losses, declining incomes and mounting debts, Mir explains. For those already struggling to make ends meet, another failed harvest or flood could mean borrowing again simply to survive.

The same disaster that may loosen one family’s dependence on a landlord can deepen another’s debt to one. For agricultural workers such as Mian Dad, recovering from a disaster is not simply a matter of rebuilding a home or returning to the fields. It can mean years of repayment — and the fear that their children will inherit the debt.

The writer is a journalist and researcher.
X: @ImtiazBaluch

Additional input and editing by Hussain Dada.
X: @hydada83

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 18th, 2026

SOUTH Asia may see a vast movement of people as climate change makes parts of the region harder to live in. According to the International Organisation for Migration, as many as 40.5m people could be forced to move by 2050. The warning deserves attention for what such displacement could mean for a region already struggling with poverty, overcrowded cities, unemployment, and competition for resources.

From the sinking coastlines of Bangladesh to the drought-hit districts of Pakistan, climate pressures are threatening millions of livelihoods. But it is not just the communities directly affected that will feel the impact. As farmers abandon unproductive land and families leave disaster-prone areas, towns and cities will have to accommodate growing populations.

Competition for housing, employment, water and public services could make life harder for poorer communities and generate social tensions. Countries with limited resources may struggle to provide for both established residents and newcomers. The danger is particularly acute in South Asia, where weak regional cooperation could hinder a coordinated response. Climate displacement could then become another source of instability unless governments prepare for it together.

The warning raises questions about how Pakistan intends to accommodate people whose homes and livelihoods become impossible to sustain. Our urban centres already struggle with inadequate housing, sanitation, transport, and job opportunities. An influx of climate-displaced families could deepen these problems.

Yet migration need not mean destitution. As the IOM chief has pointed out, moving can itself be a means of adapting to climate change. Pakistan must, therefore, recognise climate mobility as a permanent consideration in development planning. Provincial and local governments need reliable information about communities likely to leave, destinations likely to receive them, and services required to support their transition. Land-use policies, affordable housing, vocational training, and access to schools and healthcare must reflect changing population patterns.

Equally important is protecting the rights of displaced families, who should not lose access to documentation, education or public assistance simply because they have moved. Regional cooperation on forecasting, disaster preparedness and population movements could help countries anticipate shared pressures. The challenge is to ensure that people forced to move by climate change can rebuild their lives.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

AS plans for large data centres take shape in Pakistan, the debate has centred on jobs and investment, while a more basic concern has received little attention: water.

Why would a data centre compete for water? Computing generates heat, and evaporating water is one of the most cost-effective ways to remove it. By 2030, the United Nations University projects that data centres globally will use nearly triple the combined electricity usage of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, with an associated water footprint equal to the basic domestic needs of 1.3 billion people. In Pakistan, the per capita water availability had plummeted from 5,600 cubic metres in 1947 to roughly 930 by 2023.

Some weeks ago, we argued in these pages for bringing compute to where Pakistan’s surplus electricity sits, thereby monetising capacity that consumers already pay for. Water is integral to this equation, and a deeper analysis is warranted, which we aim to provide here.

How data centres keep cool: Data centres are usually cooled through open evaporative systems, which results in most of the water being lost to the atmosphere. However, these systems are comparatively cost-effective and relatively energy-efficient. Other options include closed-loop systems that recirculate water or a coolant through sealed pipes, which can cut freshwater use by up to 70 per cent; and direct-to-chip and immersion cooling, which bring liquid straight to the processor. Additionally, dry cooling uses almost no water but, by Google’s own estimate, about 10pc more energy. So there is a trade-off in cost and energy, but for a country like ours that already pays for idle generation, it is a strategic investment choice.

Running the numbers: A 2016 US Department of Energy study puts average on-site data centre water use at 1.8 litres per kWh. At that rate, a 1 GW campus running continuously would consume about 16 million cubic metres a year, roughly 0.01pc of the 175 billion cubic metres the Indus supplies annually. Sky47’s 8.5MW Karakoram-01 would, based on these estimates, use around 134,000 cubic metres a year. Even accounting for Pakistan’s hotter temperatures, these figures remain marginal. Hence, nationally, data centres are not Pakistan’s water problem.

Thirsty infrastructure is workable when siting follows the water.

However, locally they can be. A 1 GW campus would draw about 10 million gallons a day from a single source, the same volume that Karachi’s new Rs14bn Dumlottee pipeline will add for the Defence and Clifton areas, in a city receiving 550-650 million gallons daily against a demand of around 1,200 million gallons. The burden falls on the nearest communities.

Pakistan has faced this question of siting before with its nuclear power plants. Reactors with cooling towers consume about 2.5 litres per kWh, according to a 2012 review by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. At 6,755 GWh generated by Karachi’s K-3 unit in 2024, by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s count, that’s about 17 million cubic metres a year, or about 12 million gallons a day, more than a 1 GW data centre campus. Pakistan avoided that burden through siting: K-2 and K-3 sit on the coast and cool with seawater, while Chashma draws on the Chashma-Jhelum link canal. Thirsty infrastructure is workable when siting follows the water.

The problem at the foundation: Pakistan’s water crisis lies elsewhere. More than 93pc of its water goes to agriculture, and over 60pc of that is lost in conveyance and application. Four crops (rice, wheat, sugarcane, and cotton) consume over 80pc of water resources yet contribute about 5pc of GDP; Pakistan generates just $1.4 of GDP per cubic metre withdrawn, the eighth-lowest in the world. The parallel with power is striking: consumers pay for electricity that never reaches them, and the country withdraws water that never reaches a crop.

The way forward: Three interventions follow:

1. Immediate: make water a licensing condition, with energy-compute zones mandating closed-loop or dry cooling, public reporting of water use, and siting away from stressed aquifers. Dubai has promoted recycled water in district cooling since 2008, and Qatar has long incentivised non-potable cooling.

2. Short-term: cool with wastewater. Pakistan treats barely 1pc of its collected wastewater. Meanwhile, Chennai’s tertiary treatment plants are designed to recycle a fifth of the city’s sewage for industry, and Amazon, which air-cools its Indian data centres, will use treated sewage in upcoming facilities in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Operators could co-finance similar plants in Karachi and Lahore.

3. Long-term: reform agricultural water use. Punjab’s World Bank-backed irrigation programme improved over 15,000 watercourses while promoting drip irrigation and laser-levelling. Scaling it nationally and shifting acreage from rice and sugarcane towards pulses, vegetables, and sunflower would save water and cut edible oil imports. Saving just 1pc of the Indus water used for irrigation would supply a 1 GW campus for a century.

Weighing both sides: Both sides of this debate hold part of the truth. Critics are right that a poorly sited data centre can strain a community; advocates are right that the sector will not exhaust a country. Pakistan has missed too many economic waves to let a misframed debate cost it this one. The power and water are there to support the data centre industry. What remains is the discipline to manage matters both wisely and efficiently.

The writers are Fulbright scholars.

shahzaibsaqibwarraich@gmail.com

muhammadhassandajana@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

HISTORY, it has famously been said, repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Today, it is repeating itself in Pakistan as both tragedy and farce. Recent events have deepened some of the country’s overlapping fault lines — enduring features that have shaped its political landscape for decades. Together they have contributed to its chronic instability and impeded its progress.

It has meant the absence of a calm and predictable environment in which to meet the country’s growing challenges. The country seems caught in a time warp with a power elite ensuring it cannot escape its past.

Four fault lines (there are others too) are laid bare by recent political developments: unceasing confrontation between the government and opposition; centre-province conflict resulting in dismissal of elected provincial governments; parliament’s marginal role in the political system; and weak institutions whose evolution is stymied or independence eroded by predatory ruling elites.

The ongoing confrontation between the PML-N-led government and PTI may have novel aspects but it reflects a long-standing fault line in the country’s divisive politics. Government-opposition conflicts have been endemic in Pakistan’s history, with political behaviour driven by the ethic of war rather than competition. Political leaders and parties have viewed opponents as enemies to be eliminated from the political arena in a terminal conflict, not rivals to compete with, much less accommodated. Branding opponents as disloyal to the country is a well-worn, unseemly tradition. This is evident today by the disingenuous narrative peddled by federal ministers that the ousted KP government was aligned with terrorist organisations.

A culture of compromise, tolerance, and restraint never took root leaving ruling and opposition parties perpetually at loggerheads. This, in turn, opened the door to both direct and indirect interventions by the military, which could always count on support from one political party or another to oust governments and expand its power. Divide and rule strategies pursued by the establishment also fuelled political conflict.

Some enduring aspects of the political landscape are holding Pakistan back.

There were rare moments of political consensus as for example when the 1973 Constitution was adopted, Charter of Democracy agreed (but never implemented) between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in 2006 and in more recent years, the unanimous passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010. Beyond these and some other exceptions, the tradition of intolerance and authoritarian behaviour has persisted.

Opposition parties have rarely accepted the legitimacy of governments while governments refused to recognise opposition as a legitimate activity fundamental to democracy. The underlying reason has usually been disputed elections. Pakistan’s history is replete with losing sides contesting results and alleging ballot fraud, often for good reason. This happened most recently in the 2024 election which, despite its controversial nature, still saw PTI winning a plurality in the national legislature. It was blocked from forming the federal government by an alliance between its opponents and the establishment. Its uncompromising conduct today stems from what it sees as a stolen election and political manoeuvring to keep it out of power.

While linked to government-opposition conflict, the second fault line is distinct: troubled relations and friction between the centre and provinces, which have punctuated the country’s history and weakened federalism. Intolerance of opposition-controlled provincial governments by parties governing at the centre became a common feature from the very inception of Pakistan.

Just seven days after independence, the NWFP government was deposed, setting an unfortunate precedent. Thereafter, every province saw elected governments replaced by governor’s rule at some time or another, undermining the federation and testing the country’s unity. The consequences of intolerance of rivals together with the establishment’s efforts to centralise power and failure to make the federal arrangement work, were writ large in the rise of the Bengali nationalist movement that culminated in the break-up of Pakistan in 1971.

But no lesson was learnt and the fault line endured. Fast forward to the 1990s when the regionalised nature of election outcomes meant that parties forming governments at the federal level were often different from those that constituted provincial governments. This should have urged efforts to establish smooth and cooperative centre-province relations. But that did not happen. The notion that reciprocal obligations between the centre and provinces are more than a constitutional precept and actually have to be fulfilled by both sides still finds few takers.

A third fault line relates to parliament’s weakness and its inability to play its fundamental role of exercising oversight of executive actions and hold governments to account. Successive governments have viewed parliament principally as a means to maintain themselves in power rather than a forum to initiate and debate laws and policy. The preferred mode of legislating has often been through ordinance or using a brute majority to rush through laws without deliberation. This reduced parliament to little more than a rubber stamp.

The most recent examples are the 26th and 27th Constitutional amendments that were steamrolled through parliament in 2024 and 2025 without real debate and without even sharing their texts with members before moving them. There was virtually no debate when the two chambers recently endorsed the imposition of emergency in KP. Few if any governments encouraged parliament to play an active legislative and deliberative role. Instead, they preferred the legislature to be a passive body. This remains the case.

Even ruling parties with handsome majorities failed to recognise parliament’s utility as a forum to ventilate, change and share opinion. Whether this reflects lack of confidence in their backbenchers or poor understanding of how parliament should function, the outcome is marginalisation of the legislature’s role. This denudes the political system of democratic accountability.

The fourth fault line — weak institutions — is no less consequential. It is rooted in a political culture that has privileged personalities over institutions, and in a ruling elite that has little appetite for strong institutions because they impose checks and balances and place limits on power. Nothing illustrates this better than the judiciary. Its independence has been steadily eroded over the years by both civilian and military governments. The recent constitutional amendments have taken this further, making the superior judiciary subservient to the executive.

Political fault lines are not cast in stone. Their persistence doesn’t mean they cannot be overcome especially when their impact on the country is so damaging. But it requires bold, visionary leadership to break from the past.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

EVEN 128 years after his death, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan lives on. Born on Oct 17, 1817, Sir Syed passed away in 1898, but he has been endowed with Hayaat-i-Javed, or the eternal life, it seems. True to its name, Hayaat-i-Javed (1901), Sir Syed’s biography penned by Altaf Husain Hali, too, along with Sir Syed, has lived for over 125 years.

Though Hayaat-i-Javed was received well, both Sir Syed and his biography could not escape scathing remarks from doubters. Shibli No’mani’s sardonic comments, criticising Hayaat-i-Javed, have become almost proverbial and today one can hardly read or review the book without recalling Shibli, who said it was ‘kitaab-ul-manaaqib’ (book of virtues) and ‘mudallal maddahi’ (eulogy supported by reasoning). Despite the criticism, the book is considered a milestone when it comes to biography writing in Urdu and is very much a part of Urdu’s literary canon because of its impact and lasting value.

But in many of the review articles on Hayaat-i-Javed an objective and research-based approach to see its actual intent and real literary value was missing, says Dr Shams Badauni, a veteran Indian scholar. To address this lacuna, he has published a book that collects some rare and contemporaneous reviews on Hayaat-i-Javed, along with some not-so-old ones. But his book is not just another run-of-the-mill job that puts together a few articles, pasted with a limping, half-cooked intro, as is the norm. Rather, Mutal’a-iHayaat-i-Javed Ke Aik Sau Pachchees Saal, or 125 years of the study of Hayaat-i-Javed, is an editing work that can teach a few lessons to the young researchers on how to compile and edit literary works, using the principles of textual criticism. In addition to his research-based annotations, Badauni has written two prefaces and both are research papers unto themselves, sifting through the heaps of the material on Hali, Sir Syed and Hayaat-i-Javed. Dr Badauni thinks Hayaat-i-Javed also serves as an intellectual history of the 19th-century Muslims in the subcontinent, as well as Sir Syed’s life and his achievements. He says its study is in fact a study of the history of evolution of Muslim thought in the subcontinent.

Badauni’s first preface discusses Hayaat-i-Javed in detail, chronicling how and when it was written and published. It describes the earlier attempts at writing Sir Syed’s biography and says his first biography was written by G. F. I. Graham (1840-1928) in English, published in 1885. Qazi Sirajuddin Ahmed (1867-1925), a scholar from Rawalpindi and editor of Chaudhveen Sadi, had finished writing Sir Syed’s first-ever biography in Urdu in 1892, but it remained unpublished. Badauni’s second preface discovers the nature of the association and collaboration between Sir Syed and Hali, something that has hardly been touched by Hali and the readers going through his 900-plus-page book remain unaware of how and when Sir Syed and Hali met for the first time, nor has Hali said anything about what inspired him to join Sir Syed’s historic Aligarh Movement. This preface provides the readers with relevant details, which is quite rare info.

Giving the printing history, Badauni says Hayaat-i-Javed, first published in April 1901, is divided into two parts and the second part is meandering, bloated and repetitive, not as organised as the first one. The first part, having 320 pages, covers biographical details in little over 300 pages. The second part had 558 pages and indices took another 100 pages or so, but indices and a few subheadings were axed from the second edition (1903). The earliest reviews on Hayaat-i-Javed were penned by Moulvi Abdul Haq, Abdul Haleem Sharar, Waheeduddin Saleem, Zakaullah and Sir Abdul Qadir and were positive, Abul Kalam Azad showed a few reservations in his review though. The editor and contributors of Oudh Punch, a humour magazine from Lucknow, were already lampooning Sir Syed and they found new material in the shape of Hayaat-i-Javed to satirise both Hali and Sir Syed. Habibur Rahman Shervani in his article said Sir Syed was not qualified to write tafseer, nor was Hali when reviewing it. What aggrieved Hali was not the negative reviews, but the cold reception from Aligarh, which was, perhaps, intended to avoid further controversies on religious issues that had sparked during Sir Syed’s life.

Shams Badauni dug up all these rare, century-old pieces and included them in the book. He has included some other important articles on Hayaat-i-Javed by distinguished critics as well as some additional writings that help fully understand the book and its scope.

The book, published in September 2026 by Delhi’s Arshiya Publications, has been reprinted by Lahore’s World View Publishers.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

Pakistan needs infrastructure. It also has little fiscal space to pay for it. In FY25, federal development expenditure was about Rs1.05 trillion, compared with current expenditure of more than Rs15.8tr. That combination makes public-private partnerships (PPPs) particularly attractive, and potentially dangerous. When government cannot finance a motorway, hospital, water system or other infrastructure project upfront, bringing in private capital delivers the asset, operates it under an arrangement and earns a return.

But financing is not the same as funding. Private capital can finance infrastructure today. It cannot make its cost disappear. Eventually, somebody must pay, users through tariffs and tolls, government through availability payments and subsidies, or taxpayers when guarantees and contingent liabilities materialise.

Pakistan’s experience with independent power producers (IPPs) offers an important warning for its next generation of PPPs. Private investment through take or pay contracts, helped build power plants when public funds were limited. The problem was the allocation of risks and payments. In FY25, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) reported total power purchase costs of about Rs2.94tr. At the same time, the Finance Division reported circular debt of about Rs1.89tr. These burdens sit alongside distribution losses, weak recoveries, theft and tariff pressures. Pakistan learnt an important lesson through this: a bankable project for the investor may still be unaffordable for the government.

Private money can turn into public risk; private investment doesn’t eliminate govt’s financial obligations

Following the 18th Amendment, powers shifted to provinces, but leadership became more complicated. Responsibilities like health, education, and agriculture moved downward, yet federal spending still operate in these areas, creating overlap and confusion over who pays and who leads. Under the PPP law, some projects are classified as ‘Qualified Projects’ because they need special government backing, such as guarantees or subsidies. These projects face stricter review by the Public Private Partnership Authority (P3A). Other projects that don’t require such support can move ahead with lighter oversight. Recently, the government moved P3A’s administrative control from the Planning Division to the Privatisation Division.

None of these arrangements is problematic on its own. The risk comes when fragmented responsibilities make it unclear about who chooses a project, who pays for it, who delivers it, and who carries the risk. Pakistan doesn’t just need more PPP projects; it needs a pathway to decide which ones should qualify as PPPs in the first place.

Just because the private sector is involved in a PPP project doesn’t mean the government stops being accountable

Every major public investment should answer a few basic questions. Is the project genuinely a responsibility of this level of government? Does it generate sufficient economic and social benefits to justify state involvement? Can government afford its commitments over the project’s entire life cycle? Would conventional procurement offer better value? And if PPP delivery is chosen, what guarantees, payments, or liabilities will remain with the public sector?

This distinction matters beyond motorways and power plants. PPPs can support health, education, water, irrigation, housing, logistics and other social and economic infrastructure. Devolution does not mean that provincial governments must necessarily finance, build and operate every service themselves. The government can remain responsible for ensuring a service while allowing the private sector to finance or deliver parts of it. Just because the private sector is involved in a PPP project doesn’t mean the government stops being accountable, and it doesn’t mean the government automatically avoids financial risk.

Policymakers should, therefore, resist two extremes. Fiscal constraints should not stop the government from accepting private investment that can deliver infrastructure more efficiently. But at the same time, those limits should not turn PPPs into a way of shifting today’s spending into tomorrow’s debt.

The question should not be whether Pakistan needs more PPPs. It should be whether the right projects are being delivered through PPPs, whether they provide better lifecycle value than conventional procurement, and whether government understands and can afford the risks it retains.

Pakistan needs private capital. It needs infrastructure even more desperately. But the IPP experience should remind policymakers that mobilising investment is only the beginning of the equation. Moving expenditure off today’s development budget does not move risk off tomorrow’s balance sheet.

The writer is a development and climate finance consultant at Resources Future

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 19th, 2026

Once an upscale locality of Rawalpindi under British rule, Bhabara Bazaar recalls the region’s majestic past in the heart of the garrison city.

Centuries may have passed, but the area still has many structures that reflect the splendour of Mughal, Central Asian and Indian architecture.

Walking through the winding lanes of the downtown area, one can find buildings inspired by Mughal architecture. Almost all the old buildings have wooden balconies, or jharokas, a prominent feature of Mughal and Turkish architecture.

These structures tell the stories of wealthy families who lived there before the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

Bhabara Bazaar is a two-kilometre-long residential and commercial locality built by the Bhabra community, belonging to Jainism, in the early 18th century.

The old residential streets of Bhabara Bazaar have winding, narrow lanes, houses with handcrafted wooden doors and corridors leading to enclosed courtyards within their outer walls. These British-era houses usually have two or three storeys, painted ceilings and ceramic tiles. Bhabara Bazaar and its surrounding areas were considered upscale neighbourhoods at the time.

According to the Gazetteer of Rawalpindi District 1893-94, the Bhabras were a small trading community in Rawalpindi that, despite their limited numbers, deserved mention.

Describing the community, the gazetteer stated, “They were willing to do all the work, and are all well-to-do. They only number 800 souls all told, but are divided into nine tribes. Their most remarkable characteristic is their custom of undergoing long voluntary fasts, ranging from 6 to 10 days, during which they are said to eat nothing and only to drink water. They are not eating flesh or drink wine and very careful not to kill animals.”

It further noted, “Bhabaras usually wear red ‘Pagris’ (turban) whatever their age and generally some Jewellery. They were one of the innumerable small Hindu sects of India. They formed a somewhat little colony in Rawalpindi called Bhabara Bazaar. No other Hindu sects deserve separate notice.”

The community not only built houses and shops in the area but also established schools, including a Path Shala of the Jain sect, where religious education was imparted.

Many houses along the main road from Sarafa Bazaar to Teli Mohallah near Murree Road reflected the community’s commercial lifestyle, with shops on the ground floors and residences on the second and third floors.

In the narrow streets of the old locality, Om symbols and the Jain greeting Jai Jinendra can still be seen on many buildings.

Historians say the Bhabras mostly worked as moneylenders and goldsmiths, but they were also involved in grain trading and other businesses. The community’s wealth was reflected in the houses it built, which still evoke memories of its past.

After the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, members of the community migrated to India and settled in Delhi and elsewhere. Their houses were subsequently allotted to Muslim migrants from East Punjab, including Amritsar, Ludhiana and Jalandhar, as well as Kashmiri migrants who arrived later.

As people from different parts of the subcontinent settled in the area and sought livelihood opportunities, they established traditional food businesses in the bazaar. Over the past seven decades, Bhabara Bazaar has developed into a food street serving the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

In 2021, then Rawalpindi commissioner Muhammad Mehmood initiated a project to preserve the historic Bhabara Bazaar.

The plan included the rehabilitation of Sujan Singh Haveli and the development of Bhabara Bazaar Food Street at a total cost of Rs184 million.

However, the project was shelved in 2024. Of the allocated amount, Rs104 million had been earmarked for the rehabilitation of Sujan Singh Haveli and Rs80 million for the food street project.

Under the plan, a one-kilometre stretch of Bhabara Bazaar was to be restored in the style of streets from 1857, while the exteriors of surrounding heritage houses were also to be renovated in the traditional style. All electricity, telephone and other utility cables were to be shifted underground, while the sewerage system was to be upgraded with larger underground pipes.

The main objective of the rehabilitation projects was to make Rawalpindi more attractive to tourists through urban regeneration.

The plan also aimed to attract visitors travelling to Murree through Rawalpindi and create employment opportunities for local residents.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

“WE will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own … We have no other choice!” Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had famously remarked as he voiced this nation’s determination to build an indigenous nuclear deterrent programme that had, by the mid-1960s, become an existential necessity.

Some seven years later, Pakistan made it a policy imperative. That one call guaranteed the future security of the republic. Decades later, working through sheer grit and determination, Pakistan showed the world that it was more than capable of looking after itself. We stand at a very similar juncture today.

The ongoing arms race in AI threatens to upend the global economic and security order, and the turning point is likely to arrive well before we will be prepared to confront it. That is, unless we once again take control of our destiny and start shaping it with our own hands today.

A large part of our annual $4.6bn in IT exports is freelancing work, call centres, and entry-level coding, which modern AI directly imperils. At the rate at which the technology is progressing, it will rapidly render many of those services and products either low-value or useless. There is also the question of what we, as an economy, must pay in terms of compute bills if our companies continue to license AI usage from foreign corporations.

As dependence on AI grows, the bill could reach hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of the decade. At most critical risk is our defence infrastructure, where drones, electronic warfare, and high-end sensors already run on AI technology, and are only going to grow more dependent on it to maintain their efficacy. The national leadership must, therefore, make haste. In the 1970s, Pakistan was able to offer expat talent a compelling reason to return. Similar arrangements need to be made once again.

Talented computer scientists and experts from around the world must be called home, given a deadline, generous budgets, and autonomy. The systems and data centres can be placed close to where power is cheap and stable, while the research can take place where our universities are. A realistic target would be to host open-weight models at home, have researchers and technologists fine-tune them on Pakistani data and languages, run all government and defence needs within the country, and own the data pipelines as well. This would make Pakistan sovereign enough in AI without requiring a frontier-level lab or the 100-billion-dollar budgets that they need. We can build on our ambitions once the basics are in place. The Chagai test took more than two decades; the clock on AI runs much faster than that. Pakistan cannot afford to delay this project. The downside risks are too great.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

• From $1.3 billion in FY24-25, bilateral trade has fallen to a little over $350 million in FY25-26
• Traders call for balancing security and commerce needs

PESHAWAR: The sprawling terminal at Torkham, built at the cost of several billion rupees, wears a deserted look as a protracted conflict continues to overshadow trade ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Islamabad remains adamant that there can be no engagement with Kabul without tangible action against terrorists operating from its soil, but the relationship remains in suspended animation due to the intransigence of the Taliban regime.

Industries in Pakistan, especially transport and pharmaceuticals, have been facing heavy losses since the border closed on Oct 12, 2025, following deadly clashes between the two countries.

Besides Torkham, other border crossings, including Kharlachi, Ghulam Khan and Angoor Adda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Chaman in Balochistan, have also remained closed for all kinds of trade.

Figures released in July showed that Afghan Transit Trade, which stood at nearly 89,000 containers valued at $5 billion before the return of the Taliban, had plunged to just 11,592 containers worth $367 million in the outgoing fiscal year.

According to data on bilateral trade, released by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) earlier this year, Pak-Afghan trade witnessed a drop of 74pc in the last fiscal, from one year prior. Figures show that bilateral trade fell from $1.3bn in 2024-25 to $358m in 2025-26.

A 95pc decline was recorded in bilateral trade in 2026-27 compared with the previous year, according to the TDAP figures released in August.

Pakistani exports to Afghanistan include pharmaceutical products, cement, plastics, rice, fruits and vegetables among others, while major imports include onions, tomatoes, seeds, grapes, dried apricots, apples, coal, and unwrought lead.

Junaid Altaf, a former president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), said the business community of Khyber Pakht­unkhwa endured increasingly difficult economic challenges due to the prolonged closure of the Pak-Afghan border.

“For a province already facing structural economic disadvantages, the closure has not merely disrupted a trade route, it has further weakened the economic opportunities on which its businesses, workers and border communities depend,” he deplored.

Mr Altaf said that unlike Karachi and Lahore, Peshawar and the rest of KP faced higher logistics costs for many manufacturing and trading activities.

“Being far from seaports and major international shipping gateways adds to the cost of importing raw materials, transporting them to factories, manufacturing finished products and subsequently distributing those products across Pakistan or exporting them to international markets.”

Against this backdrop, the Pakistan-Afghanistan trade corridor has historically represented a major economic opportunity for KP, he said, highlighting the potential of KP to become a stronger pharmaceutical production and export centre.

The pharmaceutical sector accounted for approximately $130m in exports to Afghanistan in FY23-24, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. This figure illustrates that the loss of access to the Afghan market is a significant commercial setback with implications for production, investment and employment.

Saying that the KP business community deserved a clear and sustainable way forward, Mr Altaf suggested that the objective should not be trade at any cost, nor should it be indefinite economic isolation.

“It should be secure borders, regulated trade, competitive industry and shared prosperity,” he opined.

Malik Sohni, president of the All Pakistan Agricultural Produce Traders Federation, said that Afghanistan was a huge market for Pakistani potatoes. Up to 50 trucks carrying potatoes used to cross into Afghanistan daily, while 25 trucks of green vegetables also passed daily, he said, adding that the border closure badly hit the potato market, reducing crop cultivation by almost half.

“Potato prices will go up in the coming months as demand will rise against limited supply,” Mr Sohni feared.

He claimed that he faced a loss of Rs180m when potato prices crashed after the sudden flare in hostilities. He added that the border closure also affected Pakistani exports to Central Asia.

Besides exports and imports, a large number of people from across KP, particularly in Khyber, have been associated with the transport business and they have fallen on hard times as well. Azeemullah, a transporter, said that due to the prolonged border closure, he had to sell three of his five trucks.

“The transport sector of KP is nearly ruined,” he lamented, adding that div­erting these trucks to other parts of the country was not economically viable.

However, Fuad Ishaq, a Peshawar-based businessman and former president of the SCCI, held different views.

“I am of the view that we cannot compromise our security for just $800m in trade a year.”

He said Afghanistan had a 45m population, roughly the same as KP, and the items normally exported there could be directed somewhere else. He claimed that cutting off ties with Afghanistan also reduced the burden on hospitals and schools in Pakistan, which he described as a positive development.

“We should have trade, but security comes first,” Mr Ishaq stressed.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

THE post began with an apology. The writer Amitava Kumar explained that Facebook had blocked his Substack link in India, so he was sharing his essay as plain text instead. I read that line twice. Then I laughed, because I recognised it.

In Pakistan, we know this routine well. The link that won’t open. The site that loads everywhere except here. The workaround that everyone shares and no one in authority admits is needed.

Kumar was writing about the young Indians who call themselves cockroaches. Their movement began as satire, a joke party mocking the government over a leaked medical entrance exam. Then it became the Cockroach Janta Party. For over a month, young people camped at Jantar Mantar – Delhi’s iconic protest site.

Now their anger has turned on a revision of the voter rolls that has, reportedly, stripped millions of their right to vote. Last week, the state responded with brute force: thousands of protesters and journalists were detained; CJP leaders were picked up on arrival in Delhi, and mobile and internet services were jammed in most parts of the capital. India’s mainstream television channels looked the other way.

Seen from here, none of this looks new. We have lived through nationwide internet suspensions. We spent more than a year with X blocked. We have watched names vanish from television screens, speeches go unaired, and protests barricaded before they began. We have seen leaders detained on their way to rallies and journalists told, politely or otherwise, what not to cover. If the government across the border has a playbook, some of its chapters were written here.

But the cockroaches have a playbook too, and it is one we also know. They named themselves after the creature everyone wants to crush but can never eradicate. It is a brilliant choice. An insult became a badge. A threat became a punchline. Their posters are irreverent, often profane and frequently very funny, in a culture where young people are raised to be respectful towards their elders. Reporters at the protests have described crowds fanning each other in the heat, laughing into the police’s eyeglasses with facial recognition.

Humour is what people use when the usual channels close.

Humour is what people use when the usual channels close. It is harder to arrest and cheaper than a lawyer. Pakistanis understand this instinctively. Under Ziaul Haq, satire went underground and survived. In recent years, when television fell silent on certain subjects, the jokes simply moved online. A meme can say what a news anchor cannot, and a whole generation has learned to read between the punchlines.

When the media looks away, someone else fills the gap. In India, young reporters and small digital outlets have covered the protests that big channels ignored. One protest site even had a wall honouring the journalists who showed up. That, too, is familiar.

In Pakistan, some of the most important reporting of the past few years has come from people working with a phone, a YouTube channel — and very little protection.

Kumar wrote in the same post about another writer urging his fellow guests to “celebrate the cockroach”. Young Indians, he said, had given the country its most hopeful moment in a long time.

The sentiment is understandable. There is something moving about young people who refuse to be solemn, who meet barricades with jokes and detentions with more jokes. But hope is not the same as change, and the state has a long memory and a large budget. Laughter can sustain a movement. It cannot, on its own, win one.

It is tempting, from this side of the border, to watch In­­dia’s troubles with a certain satisfaction. I would resist that. The tools bei­ng used against India’s young protesters are not foreign to us. Neither is the courage of those using humour to fight back. What is happening in Delhi is less a story about India than a story about the region, about governments that have learned to switch off the internet faster than they can create jobs, and young people who have learned to make jokes faster than governments can ban them.

There is one difference, and it is worth naming. India has long called itself the world’s largest democracy. That claim is what makes the barricades at Jantar Mantar so jarring to watch.

We have never made such grand claims about ourselves. Perhaps that is honesty. Perhaps it is simply lowered expectations. Either way, when I look at Delhi and see a reflection of the state of affairs at home, I am not sure who should be more embarrassed.

The cockroaches are laughing. The state is cutting the internet. And from across the border, it all looks very familiar.

The joke is on us.

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

X:@LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026

Last week, the government of Pakistan imposed emergency rule and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The Pashtun-majority province, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has been deeply shaped by events across the frontier.

KP’s instability escalated during the 1980s, when Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship, backed by American and Saudi funding, transformed Pakistan into a launching pad for anti-Soviet Afghan Islamist insurgents. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1988, Pakistan aligned with the Afghan Taliban (TTA), who took power in Kabul in 1996. Even after the US forces ousted the TTA in 2001, Pakistan provided TTA fighters sanctuary to counter the new regime in Kabul installed by the US.

In 2007, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) emerged. While the TTA maintained ties with Pakistan’s security establishment, they also cultivated ideological links with the TTP. However, the TTA remained passive as the TTP carried out brutal attacks inside Pakistan.

Despite a major Pakistani military offensive (2015–2017) that displaced the TTP, Pakistan maintained the belief that the TTA were ‘good Taliban’ who would remain allies once in power. TTP became the ‘bad Taliban.’ The strategy was as juvenile as it sounds. Under the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the government began resettling TTP fighters who had escaped to Afghanistan. There was no serious bar on them retaining their weapons and regrouping. This was yet another juvenile move by the state and its then-favourite government.

Decades of contradictory policies towards the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have left Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mired in insecurity. As the state imposes emergency rule in KP, the question is whether extraordinary powers can help correct the state’s longstanding strategic failures

Understandably, during the TTA’s return to power in 2021 in Afghanistan and Imran Khan’s ouster in 2022, the TTP launched a fresh wave of violent attacks, primarily in KP. The TTP had sensed that, after Khan’s fall, the policy of the new military establishment might shift. And it did.

Today, the federal government and military establishment accuse KP’s PTI-led provincial administration of shielding TTP elements. Meanwhile, the ‘good versus bad Taliban’ strategy has crumbled as the TTA regime in Kabul refuses to stop TTP attacks and has begun cultivating ties with India. According to the Pakistani government and the military establishment, the emergency in KP will sideline the PTI-led provincial administration, paving the way for a decisive military operation against the TTP that will be able to counter proxies backed by the TTA and India more effectively.

Emergencies are often viewed as dents in a democratic system. Indeed, but here I would explore it from another angle. There are political scientists, legal scholars and economists who have long observed that structural emergencies frequently act as catalysts for institutional growth. By fracturing rigid bureaucracies, overriding legislative inertia, regulating politicised security institutions and mobilising state capacity, there is a history of emergency conditions that have spurred economic advancement and curbed security threats.

In The Political Economy of States of Emergency, legal scholar Balakrishnan Rajagopal demonstrates that economic and national security emergencies historically drive states to centralise financial governance, rationalise labour markets and establish resilient public safety nets. Complementing this, the American sociologist Mancur Olson argued that emergencies dismantle entrenched interest groups. These groups slow down economic growth and facilitate agitation.

A clear historical example of this occurred during India’s 21-month emergency (1975–1977), declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi. Prior to the declaration, India was experiencing severe economic stagflation, spiralling inflation driven by global oil shocks, constant industrial strikes and political violence. As documented by the American legal historian Granville Austin, the centralisation of executive power through the emergency enabled the enforcement of a 20-point programme, clamping down on hoarding and strikes, which rapidly reduced inflation, increased industrial production and elevated tax compliance through stringent enforcement. Violence against the state and government too decreased significantly.

In South Korea, the state of emergency following the Korean War in the 1950s allowed state planners to initiate rapid, export-led industrialisation that transformed a devastated nation into a global economic power. In his book Constitutional Dictatorship, American political scientist Clinton Rossiter argued that temporary emergency powers are necessary mechanisms designed precisely to preserve constitutional order during existential threats. According to Rossiter, far from destroying the legal framework, well-regulated emergency powers allow democracies to deploy decisive force to restore order without permanent constitutional erosion.

In Singapore, early post-independence security emergencies led to the establishment of streamlined administrative and judicial frameworks that laid the foundation for one of the world’s most stable, low-crime and commercially reliable legal environments. According to Austin, in India, periods of national emergency eventually led the judiciary to refine constitutional protections, such as establishing the “basic structure doctrine” to balance executive emergency authority with civil liberties. This structural tightening creates a durable framework that lowers everyday crime rates and clarifies rule-of-law standards after the crisis subsides.

Emergencies also provide governments with the operational flexibility required to dismantle sophisticated clandestine networks, disrupt their financial channels and re-establish state sovereignty over ungoverned spaces. In Inside Terrorism, American political scientist Bruce Hoffman highlights that anti-terror operations require agility that standard peacetime administrative frameworks rarely afford. Emergencies enable real-time inter-agency intelligence-sharing and rapid response deployments, severely restricting the operational space of militant groups.

The contemporary application of this dynamic can be seen in Pakistan’s emergency declaration in KP under Articles 232, 234 and 235. Counter-militancy efforts in KP faced institutional paralysis due to political misalignment between the federal government in Islamabad and PTI’s provincial administration over kinetic military offensives.

The Pakistani scholar Hasan Askari Rizvi notes that emergency interventions serve as critical mechanisms for the state to reassert control over volatile territories. By placing executive authority under federal direction, emergency rule allows the federal government to streamline intelligence sharing between military assets and local police, eliminate political opposition to targeted offensives against militant groups and redirect provincial budgetary resources directly into border security and counter-militancy infrastructure.

A classic empirical parallel is Peru’s invocation of emergency measures in the early 1990s, which gave law enforcement the extraordinary legal tools necessary to capture the notorious militant leader Abimael Guzmán and effectively neutralise his violent ‘Shining Path’ insurgency.

Similarly, France’s 2015 emergency created integrated counter-terrorism intelligence databases and administrative search powers that permanently improved the state’s capacity to disrupt terror plots, while the UK’s security provisions during the conflict between Irish militants and the state in the 1970s and 1980s were eventually codified into permanent frameworks, such as the Terrorism Act 2000.

Knee-jerk reactions to emergency/governor rule in KP are expected. New conditions should be tracked and monitored instead of being outrightly rejected through typical social media outrage. For the state and government, it is important to learn from examples in which emergencies not only helped streamline economies and curb violence but also contributed in strengthening democracy in the long run.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 18th, 2026

THE Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010, was an important response to problems that directly affect women. It enabled the ombudsman to hear cases, many of which were resolved in women’s favour. A recent judgement has now eliminated an avenue that many women used to report harassment. The Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling, which narrows the interpretation of harassment, is a setback for women’s space in public life.

Unfortunately, it appears to show that a major state institution is prepared to restrict rather than expand women’s safety at work. From birth to death, women and girls in Pakistan face limits on where they can go freely, where they may go only under certain conditions, and where they cannot go at all. Visitors to Pakistan often notice their limited visibility as one of the first features of public life. This absence should not be dismissed as cultural; it largely reflects structural factors.

Restrictions on mobility — driven mainly by concerns about safety — help explain poor educational outcomes for girls, physical inactivity during adolescence, and their alarmingly low participation in the labour force as adults. The lack of safety outside the home is among the most frequently cited reasons for not sending girls to school, alongside poverty and families’ inability to afford schooling. The problem is intensified by the limited availability of girls’ schools in many parts of Pakistan.

Undoubtedly, the shortage of schools and female teachers, together with poor learning quality, creates major barriers. Millions of girls live in districts where the nearest public school is more than an hour away and therefore out of practical reach. These supply-side failures prevent many girls from even imagining that they could enter a classroom. Perceived danger reinforces the barrier at home: some girls never enrol, while others drop out at puberty. At the very least, girls who are fortunate enough to live near a school should not be excluded because the journey is unsafe.

Women’s limited ability to work outside the home is probably the most affected by structural factors.

A Population Council and Unicef study, Adolescent Girls’ Voices on Enhancing Their Own Productivity, found that parents were reluctant to send girls to school because of fear of harassment on the way. This fear has been exacerbated by an incredible surge in social media-related harassment and cyberbullying, thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones and other digital devices. Requiring a chaperone or private transport immediately increases the costs of sending girls to school. Not surprisingly, an estimated 8.3 million girls aged 10 to 19 lack official status — they are neither in school, at work, nor married. This large cohort of girls depicts a decade of lost productivity, learning, and, above all, self-esteem.

The state’s role is clear: protect the rights of all its citizens from harassment and unsafe spaces. It must remove these hurdles by providing structural solutions that enable girls to attend and complete school. Harassment laws that create safe routes and workplaces must be seen as educational policy requirements, not peripheral issues.

Women’s limited ability to work outside the home is probably the most affected by structural factors. It is also the most costly in terms of losses to the economy and society. Female labour force participation rates have remained stagnant at around 22 per cent for the last 15 years. When women earn, they tend to spend more proactively, with direct payoffs for children’s education, health, and general welfare. But this will not happen if women feel unprotected at the workplace.

Although women are generally accepted as schoolteachers and in some health professions, attacks on doctors and Lady Health Workers threaten even these spaces — many work mostly out of economic desperation. Employers are reluctant to give women jobs with longer, more secure contracts because of perceived hazards and domestic duties. At the other end of the spectrum, highly educated and affluent women participate in the labour force, cushioned by family support and private transport. The result is some improvement in women’s participation at the top end for highly educated, privileged women and, at the other end, for the truly desperate who must leave home to buy food and ensure their families’ survival, ie, domestic help, cleaners, and informal sector workers who do the most menial work.

Women’s representation in Pakistan’s parliament is the only positive achievement in the SDGs’ gender indicators. Most elected women come from privileged families, but not all, as the pool expands. The trend began with the mandatory party quota for women. Otherwise, trends of an even more male-dominated parliament would have continued. The handful of women lawmakers have made headway in legislating, or at least highlighting, issues important to women and human rights.

Comparable action is required in laws and public policy to expand women’s participation in every public sphere, especially formal employment. Increasing the number of women in decision-making and other critical positions — particularly in the police and judiciary — would make a tangible difference. A 30pc recruitment quota in the formal sector is essential. Greater representation in formal paid work will generate positive spillover effects in other sectors.

It is especially imperative to address the extremely high unemployment rate (24pc) among young women who have completed more than a secondary education. Despite completing higher levels of education, this group is denied opportunities for secure employment. A quota system and positive supportive legislation will directly and positively affect the current generation whom we repeatedly say we care about the most.

Women and girls must have safe passage and be guarded with assurances that harassment is a punishable offence. Recent measures to improve women’s mobility are encouraging, such as pink buses and scooter loans, but they remain too few and too far apart. Above all, there is a need to change mindsets; a public campaign against harassment of women and girls in public spaces must become a priority.

Society must review its standards and morals and move forward, not backwards, in legislation, run bold campaigns, and do whatever it takes to correct this pernicious course of restricting, rather than expanding, the power of women and girls.

The writer is country adviser to the Population Council.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026

THE civil-military relationship in Pakistan has never been ideal. Despite recent conciliatory efforts and the policy of accommodation adopted by the coalition government, concerns within security-focused circles persist about the handling of several government affairs.

For now, though, there is little chance of an escalation in civil-military tensions involving the federal and provincial governments; the last hitch was the PTI government, which was ousted through governor’s rule and emergency. The major allegation against the PTI government has been that it was hesitant to take a clear position against the terrorists, enabling them to expand their influence in parts of the province, especially in the southern districts.

The establishment is sensitive about the narrative, and considers it subversion and part of hybrid warfare; it looks upon any political or ideological support for it as support to the enemy. Terminology describing Taliban-aligned terrorists as ‘Fitna al-Khwarij’ and Baloch insurgents as ‘Fitna al-Hindustan’ reflects the same approach. Everyone is expected to follow this approach; the PTI government’s disagreement on several security-related policies is, therefore, interpreted as an act of subversion. Meanwhile, it is clear how much civilian governments actually contribute to security-related affairs.

The security domain has often caused friction between the establishment and civilian governments; over the decades, the political leadership has learned not to voice disagreement on security-related affairs. ‘Memogate’ was the last such lesson for the PPP; and ‘Dawn leaks’ for Mian Nawaz Sharif; the removal of Imran Khan’s PTI from its provincial seat of power in KP appears to have followed the same pattern. The story is not simply about subversion or disagreement over security policy. There are other relevant aspects that some commentators have pointed out: among them is the fiscal issue which also triggered the call for new provinces and the reversal of the 18th Amendment. Yet another dimension is linked to closing the Afghan file.

Bhutto’s policy was just the lever. It was Zia who turned it into an ideology.

The Afghan policy has shaped Pakistan’s politics for half a century; but now there is a general acceptance, even within security circles, that it has not worked. It is evident that the state is distancing itself from past approaches. In this regard, some intellectuals and commentators have painted militancy as a cultural expression of Pakhtuns, which the local dynamics of the larger Pakhtun society has aggravated. There is no need to deconstruct such a perception, which would be stigmatisation. In effect, applying a sociocultural lens to the issue takes away focus from the main architects of the security and Afghan policy. The previous Afghan policy worked well but had lost its utility in geopolitical contexts. This was the policy crafted by the military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq and his team, and it was more or less functional until the Taliban captured power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Though the Zia file saw a few changes and amendments, the overall framework for dealing with these affairs did not change much.

The Zia file had a few critical components that even allies including Washington, Beijing, Riyadh, and Ankara had concerns about — particularly the reliance on non-state actors. Mian Nawaz Sharif had drawn attention to it but faced the consequences. Many analysts believe that this flawed policy was responsible for spawning the TTP and generating terrorism in KP but official narratives do not link the state of affairs to the policy choices made earlier.

Establishment circles appear to want a new Afghan policy that best suits their geopolitical and internal security objectives. A complete detachment from the Taliban is part of the new approach, and the Sohail Afridi government was reluctant to adopt it because it would mean a large-scale military operation, displacement, and increased security-related resource allocation — which would also have political consequences. After the removal of his government, the hurdles preventing a new policy have been eliminated; the new set-up now has to deliver, as was expected of the Afridi government. There will be no opportunity any longer to shift the onus of blame onto a political government, despite official narratives distancing the security state from political change in KP.

However, the dimensions of the new Afghan policy remain unclear. For instance, how will the state proceed if the Afghan Taliban agree to detach themselves from the terrorist networks operating against Pakistan from Afghan soil? Still, another argument being promoted is that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, not Gen Ziaul Haq, was the real architect of Pakistan’s Afghan policy. There is some truth to that. After Sardar Daud’s 1973 coup in Kabul and his revival of the Pakhtunistan issue, the Bhutto government began hosting and training Afghan Islamists, among them men who would later become the commanders of the anti-Soviet jihad. The FC and a small circle of officials ran this as a pressure tool against Kabul. Notably, the province’s first governor after 1973, appointed in 1975, following the ban on the National Awami Party, reflected the same anxieties about Pakhtun nationalism and Afghanistan.

But Bhutto’s policy was just the lever. It was Zia who turned it into an ideology. After the Soviet invasion of 1979, the Afghan question became the organising principle of the state: the jihad, the refugee economy, the madressah network, the doctrine of strategic depth, and an intelligence apparatus that grew more powerful than the elected institutions meant to oversee it. That legacy matters, and it is Zia’s.

Now it is up to the supporters of the PPP how they take the argument, and whether they are ready to carry the entire burden of history on their shoulders; they also face criticism that Benazir Bhutto continued Bhutto’s legacy and allowed Gen Naseerullah Babar to nurture the Taliban in 1994-96, the same general who had crafted the Afghan files for her father. The Taliban generations have caused huge losses to the PPP, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026

AS reports continue to do the rounds of possible Russian mediation to resolve the differences between Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the Foreign Office has underscored that successful dialogue requires commitment from Kabul to end cross-border terrorism.

This demand is neither new nor unreasonable; it highlights the point that talks and support for anti-Pakistan terrorist groups cannot go hand in hand. On Friday, the FO said that while it was not aware of any formal Russian mediation initiative, Pakistan was open to engagement that produced tangible results. Representatives of Pakistan and the Taliban regime were both in Russia earlier this month as part of the Moscow Format regional consultations. A joint communique could not be issued at the conclave due to frosty Islamabad-Kabul ties, specifically because the Taliban objected to including any references to terrorism in Afghanistan. Russia had offered its good offices to resolve the impasse, if both sides required its help.

The official Taliban position amounts to a state of denial: it is hardly a secret that some of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups find shelter in Afghanistan. Therefore, the Kabul regime’s denials hold no water. Many other third parties — Qatar, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and China — have tried to mediate between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with varying degrees of success. Russia is the only state that recognises the Taliban regime. Perhaps Moscow can be engaged by Pakistan and Afghanistan to try and give the peace process another chance.

Pakistan and Afghanistan share borders and linguistic and cultural links. Good relations are essential, even though bilateral relations have remained largely strained over the past several decades. However, the biggest obstacle to long-term peace is the Taliban’s sheltering of terrorist groups. Pakistan desires peace, but for talks to succeed, Kabul must offer visible CBMs, such as an end to cross-border terrorism. As the FO has said, a “verifiable mechanism” that ensures an end to anti-Pakistan terrorism emanating from Afghanistan can lead the way to peace. Kabul’s claims that it is not hosting violent groups are of little value.

Action against such groups is required, not hollow refutations. Moreover, regional states must realise that today it is Pakistan that is battling terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Tomorrow, similar violent actors based in that country can destabilise other regional states. Russia itself has been targeted by IS-K terrorism. The group finds a home in Afghanistan, even though it is at daggers drawn with the Taliban. If the Taliban regime commits to preventing groups based on its soil from attacking neighbouring states, the process of normalisation and regional integration of Afghanistan can begin.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026

• PM Shehbaz insists govt was ‘compelled’ to impose emergency and governor’s rule
• Says Centre exhausted dialogue before taking measures
• Nawaz Sharif stresses decision should have been taken earlier
• Accuses PTI of using provincial resources for confrontation

LAHORE: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sha­rif and PML-N President Nawaz Sharif on Saturday defended the imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with the premier saying the federal government had been “compel­led” to take the step over security conce­rns and the elder Sharif arguing that the intervention should have come much earlier.

The Centre imposed emergency and governor’s rule in KP on Oct 11, citing the provincial government’s “deliberate disengagement” from the fight against terrorism. The measures were endorsed by parliament this week amid opposition protests.

On Saturday, Shehbaz Sharif visited the residence of Rashid Bashir Virk in Gujranwala to offer condolences over the death of his father, former MNA Mahmood Bashir Virk.

After recalling the late PML-N lawmaker’s services, the prime minister said the Centre had made a “last attempt” to avoid imposing emergency, referring to rounds of talks held by a joint government-PPP delegation with the opposition.

The second round of talks, held on Oct 3, lasted several hours but ended without a breakthrough.

“They had talks with them (PTI) day and night, for 48 hours, and sat with the intention to settle matters from every aspect,” PM Shehbaz said, adding that a draft agreement had been prepared under which the PTI was to call off its protest march.

The prime minister said he had held multiple meetings with Sohail Afridi, the KP chief minister whose role now stands non-functional, as well as with his predecessor Ali Amin Gandapur.

“In every meeting, I tried my best to convey to him from the depths of my heart and with seriousness that KP is an extremely beautiful province and has very brave and honourable people, […] and I am always present in every way for their development and prosperity,” the premier said.

PM Shehbaz said he had assured the KP government of the Centre’s support in jointly fighting terrorism and addressing security challenges in the province.

He added that he had assured the chief minister that decisions regarding administration, resources and requirements would be made in consultation with the provincial government.

“But, unfortunately, despite all these efforts, thousands of our law enforcement personnel, soldiers and officers of the armed forces were sacrificing their lives to defend the homeland,” he said.

The prime minister said the federal government had made repeated efforts to address the situation but had instead faced “threats and long marches every other day”.

The Oct 11 measures followed weeks of political tensions between the Centre and PTI, as well as negotiations aimed at bridging differences after the party announced a long march towards Islamabad to demand the release of its jailed founder, Imran Khan.

Nawaz backs governor’s rule

Meanwhile, PML-N President Nawaz Sharif on Saturday fully backed the imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in KP, saying the measures should have been taken much earlier as the law and order situation deteriorated.

Speaking to journalists at his residence in London, Mr Sharif said the situation in KP had become increasingly alarming under the PTI government and that the federal authorities should have intervened before matters worsened further.

“This intervention was necessary to restore peace, improve governance and protect the interests of the people,” the former prime minister was quoted as saying by journalist Azhar Javed, who was present in the media talk.

Mr Sharif also accused the PTI of using provincial government resources for political confrontation with the federation.

“Which country allows a chief minister to use official resources to attack the federal capital?” he asked, questioning the use of provincial resources for political purposes.

He accused PTI of damaging the province during its 13 years in power, alleging that successive PTI governments had failed to provide effective governance and neglected the interests of ordinary citizens.

Mr Sharif said the people of KP were patriotic Pakistanis who deserved better governance and leadership.

Zulqernain Tahir also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026