Exclusionary economic measures cause prolonged disruptions in Pakistan-Afghanistan trade and transit, and generate wide-ranging economic and social consequences across the region. Uncertainty, rather than cost alone, has emerged as the most damaging factor, eroding livelihoods, weakening regional connectivity, and placing disproportionate strain on border communities between the two countries. These concerns were raised at the “Exploring Pathways to Pakistan-Afghanistan Trade and Economic Connectivity” dialogue, organised by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) as part of its Beyond Boundaries initiative. The dialogue convened policymakers, customs officials, business leaders, and economic experts from Pakistan and Afghanistan to reflect on the evolving trade dynamics and their broader regional implications. Khan Jan Alokozay, Co-President of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PAJCCI), emphasised that peace in the region is inseparable from economic stability, underscoring that robust and predictable trade forms the foundation of durable bilateral relations. Without continuity in trade, he cautioned, broader objectives of peace and regional integration would remain fragile. Fazal Moqeem Khan, former President of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called for the establishment of cross-border economic zones to institutionalise trade and transit cooperation - with manufacturers on both sides collaborating and heightening joint stakes - and move beyond ad hoc arrangements. He warned that isolated or one-sided approaches to trade are not viable and ultimately weaken both economies. Highlighting the human cost of trade disruptions, Mujeeb Shinwari, President of the All Torkham Custom Clearing Agents Association, noted that border communities bear the brunt of repeated closures, as their economic lifelines depend directly on cross-border trade. He observed that persistent disruptions have crippled local economies and...

Addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, this open letter by Engineer Arshad Abbasi analyses accelerated Himalayan glacial degradation as a transboundary environmental security risk with direct implications for Pakistan’s water, food, energy, and economic systems. Drawing on climate science, judicial findings, and principles of international environmental law, it argues that continued diplomatic inaction undermines due diligence obligations and state responsibility. The letter calls for the integration of environmental security into Pakistan’s foreign policy and legal strategy as a matter of constitutional duty and international compliance. An Open and Formal Letter to Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan Minister for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan Subject- An Oath of Office Is an Oath of Survival: You are Custodian of Pakistan’s Water, Energy, Economic and Food Security Honourable Deputy Prime Minister, There are moments in the life of a state when silence ceases to be neutral. When restraint becomes retreat. When inaction hardens into complicity. Pakistan has entered such a moment, and history will record whether its leaders recognized it in time. I write to you not as a political adversary, nor as a theorist removed from consequence, but as a citizen bound to this land by birth, memory, and inheritance. Some inherit assets. Others inherit rivers, glaciers, and fault lines. I belong to the latter. I am a native citizen of Islamabad, rooted in this soil much like Indigenous peoples elsewhere—witnesses rather than owners, custodians rather than consumers. I document this not as a professional climate entrepreneur, but as a born environmentalist, for whom climate change and ecology are not a profession, but a lifelong obligation. My voice is not speculative. It is grounded in the record. I was directly involved in one of Pakistan’s most consequential environmental interventions: the New Murree...

Following Donald Trump’s return to power, Pakistan has regained significant prominence in the foreign policy strategy of the United States. During the presidency of Joe Biden, Washington tended to distance itself from South Asia – particularly from Pakistan. Under Trump, however, U.S. engagement with the region has gradually intensified once again. On June 18 and August 10, 2025, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, Asim Munir, paid an official visit to the United States, marking the most substantial diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Islamabad since July 2019. Soon after, on September 25, 2025, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited the White House, signaling the revival of active political engagement and the gradual restoration of mutual trust between the two sides. Historical Ally Historically, relations between the United States and Pakistan have largely been of an allied nature. Since Pakistan’s founding in 1947, the two countries have repeatedly cooperated within various military and strategic frameworks, including SEATO and CENTO. The United States provided Islamabad with military and economic assistance, viewing Pakistan’s territory as a vital strategic foothold – especially during the Soviet-Afghan War. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Pakistan’s importance surged once again, serving as a key logistical base for U.S.-led counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. However, the bilateral relationship has long been characterized by alternating phases of cooperation and estrangement: ties weakened during the Vietnam War, after Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998, and again following the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. During the Biden administration, Pakistan was primarily viewed through the prism of nuclear nonproliferation, terrorism, and extremism. Under Trump, however, bilateral dialogue has been revitalized. Washington expressed explicit support for Islamabad’s counterterrorism operations against Baloch separatists and formally designated...

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...