Date: 01,Dec, 2025 When a woman walks into a heavily guarded military compound with explosives strapped to her body, it forces a rethink of everything we assume about insurgency, vulnerability, and power. The identification of Zareena Rafiq, also referred to as Tarang Maho, as the attacker in Nokkundi signals a deliberate move by the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) to use female operatives as both tactical and symbolic instruments. While women-led suicide attacks remain extremely rare in Baloch militancy, each instance carries outsized significance, challenging conventional assumptions about who participates in armed insurgency and how. This situates the BLF within a broader trend in Baloch insurgent groups to deploy women in high-profile operations, where visibility, shock value, and the messaging potential of gender intersect with operational objectives. In April 2022, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) deployed what is widely acknowledged as the first confirmed female suicide bomber in the Baloch insurgency: Shari Baloch. She detonated herself outside the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi, killing several Chinese instructors and a Pakistani driver. At 30, she was a school teacher from Turbat, a mother of two, studying for an MPhil after earning an MSc in Zoology. Her profile shattered prevailing security assumptions: a middle-class, educated woman from a non-militant family background willing to self-sacrifice. Then came Sumaiya Qalandrani Baloch, who carried out a suicide attack in June 2023 targeting a military convoy in Turbat. She was engaged to Rehan Baloch, the son of BLA founder General Aslam Baloch, and had previously worked in the group’s media wing, illustrating how militant networks merge ideological indoctrination, recruitment, and operational deployment within long-standing personal networks. Mahal Baloch reportedly carried out a car-bomb attack at the gate of an FC (Frontier Corps) camp in Bela, Balochistan, in August 2024, while...

Date: 24, November, 2025 By Engineer Arshad H Abbasi At a time when Pakistan is struggling to stabilize its economy, rebuild public trust, and meet the conditionalities of yet another IMF program, the governance of its revenue authority sits at the heart of the crisis. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)—responsible for generating the resources that keep the state functional—has once again come under global scrutiny. The IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Report serves as the most cogent confirmation yet that Pakistan’s fiscal woes are not merely financial; they are structural, institutional, and deeply political. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), essential yet fragile, is now fatally compromised. This is not merely a systemic failure; it is the ultimate indictment of successive custodians. Notably, the former head of the FBR also served as federal secretary of power and CEO of two major LNG-fired power plants. Had energy security been treated as a core component of national security—as it is in the US, India, and other developed nations—his accountability might have been sought under a far sterner statute, like the Treason Act. Instead, his tenure and the institution’s performance is scrutinised through the lens of the International Monetary Fund’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Report (IMF) as Chairman FBR. The report’s verdict on the FBR is brutally honest: a charge sheet in the purest sense. For that stark candor, the IMF deserves recognition. There is a particular kind of tragedy reserved for institutions that have been hollowed out from within. It is not the drama of a sudden collapse, but the slow, grinding decay of purpose, competence, and integrity. It is a death by a thousand cuts, where each compromise, each act of neglect, each surrendered principle adds another brick to a tomb of its own making. Nowhere in the recent International Monetary Fund’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Report is this tragedy more starkly illustrated than...

Nasira Habib, an educationist and environmentalist known for her work on feminism, gender justice, food education, and early childhood learning, spoke about Pakistan’s pressing challenges — ensuring safe food, maintaining healthy soils, and mitigating climate change — during a conversation at the Center for Research and Security Studies. She emphasized that gender justice must be grounded in concrete evidence, especially when looking at the impact of pesticides on women working in agricultural fields and the growing problem of nutrition poverty in rural areas. The discussion highlighted how deeply food safety, soil health, and climate resilience are interconnected, and why addressing them together is essential for Pakistan’s future. Nasira also stressed the importance of documenting indigenous knowledge and raising community awareness, noting that meaningful policy action is urgently needed to protect both people and the food systems they depend on.  

By Javed Hassan The IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA) for Pakistan released by the Ministry of Finance on November 19, 2025, as a prior action for the next tranche, is a remarkably blunt document for an institution not known for pulling punches only when absolutely necessary. In the measured but unsparing language that only the Fund can deploy with impunity, it lays bare a familiar yet still staggering reality: governance failures and corruption are not marginal frictions in Pakistan; they are a central macroeconomic constraint, draining something on the order of 6–6.5 percent of GDP every year. The diagnostic’s core findings can be summarized without much sugar-coating: • Fiscal and tax systems remain riddled with discretionary exemptions, off-budget spending, and elite capture. Illicit financial flows and tax avoidance together siphon off roughly the same share of potential revenue as the entire reported tax-to-GDP ratio manages to collect. • Public procurement and state-owned enterprises operate as a parallel economy of patronage. Even the Rs 5.3 trillion in recoveries proudly touted by the National Accountability Bureau over the past two years represent only a tiny fraction of the systemic haemorrhag• An overburdened, under-modernized judiciary – plagued by case backlogs, outdated procedures, and integrity deficits – has become one of the binding constraints on investment. Contract enforcement and property rights remain precarious, feeding a pervasive bribe culture. • The Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), originally created to cut red tape for foreign investors, is flagged for its opaque tax concessions, extra-legal immunities, and lack of accountability – in effect, a new institutional channel for the very elite capture the report elsewhere condemns. • Anti-corruption institutions are fragmented, under-resourced, and lacking elementary whistle-blower protection. The report quietly recommends what many have long called...

Policy Brief Most democracies recognise temporary immunity for sitting leaders to ensure uninterrupted governance and prevent politically motivated litigation. Countries such as France (Article 67 of the Constitution), Pakistan (Article 248(2) of the Constitution), and the United States (through Department of Justice policy) provide such safeguards. While some countries grant former presidents extended immunity, in most democracies, protection ends once a leader’s term expires, making them accountable under the law like any other citizen. 27th Amendment: What’s at stake for Pakistan? Pakistan’s future democratic landscape could face profound repercussions from the newly proposed 27th Constitutional Amendment, which seeks to embed lifetime immunity for the President while restructuring key military and judicial institutions. The amendment inserts the phrase “Notwithstanding any judgment of any court” into Article 248, bars any criminal proceedings against the President for life, and against a governor only during their term, and prevents courts from issuing arrest or imprisonment orders against the officeholder. Beyond the presidency, the amendment establishes a Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) with original jurisdiction over constitutional disputes, abolishes the post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, consolidates military command under a new Chief of the Defence Forces, and extends equivalent immunity to top military officers promoted to ranks such as Field Marshal, Marshal of the Air Force, or Admiral of the Fleet. The Risks of Lifetime Immunity Lifetime immunity extends legal protection indefinitely, including for acts unrelated to official duties. Proponents argue it preserves respect for office and shields leaders from political harassment. Yet in practice such provisions undermine constitutional accountability, weaken judicial oversight, and insulate public officeholders from scrutiny – especially in countries where democratic institutions are...

Don’t Give Up Rational Engagement By Imtiaz Gul In this piece, CRSS Executive Director Imtiaz Gul argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan’s ongoing mistrust and tit-for-tat posturing come at the expense of ordinary citizens, traders, and refugees. A lasting solution will demand moving past blame and coercion toward pragmatic, accountable dialogue. The battle lines are drawn. Pakistan has removed any distinction between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA), and portrays them as two sides of the same coin - both working in the service of arch-rival India. The stand-off has brought Afghans together like never before, both at home and abroad. The Afghan diaspora is celebrating the collapse of the third round of the talks in Istanbul, setting aside their long-standing criticism of the Taliban regime for excluding women from work and education. Once ardent haters of the Taliban, they are celebrating the TTA’s “defiance” vis-à-vis Pakistan. Friends in Afghanistan believe the talks were doomed to fail because of the structure: when two intelligence chiefs sit across the table, the best they can do is try to checkmate each other rather than engage in an out-of-the-box conversation. Let us dissect this conundrum from four angles. Firstly, many Pakistani friends familiar with the Afghan issue and its accompanying intricacies had foretold the outcome; the fate of talks is largely predictable when spymasters discuss political relationships, trade, and business. Propagandist accusations, threats, and planted “leaks” from the talks appearing on official as well as dubious platforms further vitiated an already toxic air. Secondly, one wondered why even dozens of hours of parleys failed in producing a mutually favourable result, particularly if the entire process centres on the TTP and its shelters in Afghanistan. Pakistan demanded an end to terrorism in Pakistan via the TTP’s sanctuaries in Afghanistan. “In the aftermath of Pakistan’s ‘Operation...

By Abdul Waheed Waheed Afghanistan’s strategic diversification of trade routes through Central Asia and Iran has reduced its economic reliance on Pakistan, lessening the impact of repeated border closures. This analysis explores how these shifts are strengthening Afghanistan’s resilience, reshaping cross-border trade dynamics, and highlighting the need for both Afghanistan and Pakistan to move from coercion toward cooperative, predictable engagement. A courageous step taken a decade ago to reduce Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistan and to explore alternative trade corridors is now bearing fruit. Those forward-looking policies, once underestimated, have today resulted in Afghanistan’s calm indifference toward Pakistan’s closure of the Durand Line gates. The bold decisions to diversify trade routes and strengthen regional connectivity, particularly through Central Asia and Iran, have gradually freed Afghanistan from the economic stranglehold once exerted by its southern neighbor. The era when a single day of Durand Line gates closure could trigger panic and inflation across Afghan markets is gone. What we now witness is a quiet but profound shift: the transformation of vulnerability into resilience, born out of strategic foresight and hard-earned lessons from history. It has already been three weeks since the gates along the Durand Line were closed, yet prices inside Afghanistan have remained relatively stable. The closures no longer exert significant economic pressure on the country. This newfound stability reflects Afghanistan’s growing economic resilience and its gradual shift away from over-dependence on Pakistan for trade and transit, while also demonstrating a measured response to Pakistan’s unilateral imposition of restrictions on Afghan trade and movement. However, the closures have taken a toll on Afghan exports, particularly perishable goods such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Thousands of tons of these products, destined for Pakistani markets, have...