“Our lives have totally changed. We can never be the same afterwards … and it’s very painful,” lamented Nida Javed while talking to a private news channel.

She was discussing the reaction to her videos, which had gone viral on social media. The videos were recorded by cops inside a police station after she was arrested on April 4, from what police described as an illegal rave party in Kasur. Javed, a social media influencer, claimed it was a music concert.

The 55 men and women arrested from the event were brought to the Mustafabad police station, where videos were recorded with their faces clearly visible and uploaded to social media.

Faced with criticism over the unlawful action, Kasur District Police Officer Essa Khan Sukhera suspended five cops for allegedly filming and posting the videos. At least one of the suspended personnel was also accused of tipping off the organisers about the raid and allowing them to escape.

The incident subsequently drew the ire of the Lahore High Court, which reprimanded the police for violating the law and sought a report from the Punjab police chief regarding the force’s use of social media.

Common practice

Punjab Police rules explicitly prohibit officers from recording videos that might reveal the identity of suspects and under-trial prisoners.

In 2020, Punjab Police issued a policy for the use of social media by its officers. “No police personnel shall share anything in violation of the legal provisions dictating the anonymity of arrested accused, anonymity of police personnel involved in a police operation or investigation and confidentiality of investigations,” the policy states.

Despite clear guidelines, videos of accused and suspects are recorded in police stations across Punjab with their faces clearly visible.

An analysis by Dawn found that while these videos are not posted to official social media accounts, they still find their way online, often uploaded by anonymous accounts, local crime reporters and small news outlets.

Dawn found several videos online which were recorded inside police stations prominently featuring local police officers alongside the suspects, whose faces were clearly identifiable.

More than 50 such videos have been posted to multiple TikTok accounts and Facebook pages since 2021. These videos were reportedly recorded inside police stations in Rawalpindi, Attock, Mailsi, Hattian, Sialkot, Lahore, Fateh Jung, Vehari, Kahror Pakka, Nankana Sahib, Jhelum, Sahiwal, Gujar Khan and Sargodha.

A Punjab Police spokesperson told Dawn that the department has a strict policy against recording interviews and videos of under-trial prisoners.

“We don’t allow interviews of under-trial prisoners,” said Syed Mubashar Hussain of the department’s Directorate of Public Relations.

He said any officer who violates this policy faces departmental action.

‘Nexus’

Lawyers and crime reporters told Dawn that these videos are recorded by police officers and then disseminated for personal projection.

Two Lahore-based crime reporters, who wished not to be named since they regularly seek information from the police, said station-level officials — constables and SHOs — usually record and circulate these videos “to showcase their performance and garner public support for their actions”.

A crime reporter who shared several videos of accused persons recorded inside police stations on TikTok told Dawn that they “receive press releases from police” which they post online.

“When police arrest a gang, they especially request us [for coverage].”

According to Advocate Vishal Ahmed Shakir, there is a nexus between police officers and reporters, where either the cops call reporters for their own publicity or the reporters pay police officials to record interviews of under-custody prisoners.

In 2023, Shakir filed a public interest litigation in the LHC against the airing of interviews of inmates in custody.

Justice Ali Zia Bajwa, who heard the petition, ordered the police not to facilitate actions that violated the right to privacy, dignity and respect of citizens.

Procedural violations

Tariq Khosa, a former top police officer, said these videos not only violate the law but also orders issued by provincial police chiefs.

However, the procedural violations do not begin with the recording of these videos. According to Mr Khosa, in most cases, suspects are arrested without due process.

“No person can be arrested unless enough evidence is available on record. An arrest can’t be made on a mere report without investigation or verification,” said Mr Khosa, who has served as the Balochistan inspector general of Police and FIA director-general.

Even after the arrest, he pointed out, videos of suspects can only be recorded during interrogation to submit as evidence in court. Those videos too have to be recorded in the presence of a witness — a second police officer or any other person — and with the suspect’s consent.

Shakir, the advocate, said these videos have a detrimental impact on trials. An accused, during an interview, may confess to the crime out of fear of torture by police, but during their testimony before a judge, they retract the confession, citing duress.

‘Harm to dignity’

Most videos posted on social media included suspects arrested for gambling, flying kites, smoking sheesha and prostitution — crimes that infrequently result in conviction, according to Shakir.

He cited the example of the Kasur incident, where the arrested men and women were released by the court on the first hearing.

“Reason being the process wasn’t correct, recoveries weren’t correct, and their [the accused’s] statements weren’t recorded,” he said, citing procedural lapses, an assertion denied by the police.

At least 27 videos seen by Dawn included women suspects with their faces clearly visible. The men and women were said to be arrested during alleged raids on parties, hotels, brothels and even massage centres and charged with prostitution and obscenity.

These videos put women at greater risk when they go back into society after getting bail or an acquittal, which is the result of 90 per cent of prostitution cases, according to Shakir. He added that most accused are discharged on the first hearing since prostitution can only be proven when there is an exchange of money.

Mr Khosa, the former police chief, also pointed out the weak foundations of these cases. He said police can proceed under Section 294 of the Pakistan Penal Code (Obscenity) only if an immoral act is done in a public space. In cases involving women, he said, such videos are used for blackmail and extortion. “It is all an ulterior motive.”

For Shakir, these videos cause irreparable damage to a person’s dignity. They also violate Article 14 of the Constitution, which says the dignity of a person is “inviolable”.

He added that courts have repeatedly upheld the notion that an acquittal is akin to never having committed the crime. “These videos mean even after acquittal, my reputation and dignity in society can not be repaired.”

Header image: These screen grabs from videos recorded inside police stations and posted on social media clearly showed the faces of accused persons. Dawn blurred the faces.

“I’ve seen this neighbourhood grow — and outgrow itself,” said Arif, a resident of Paposh Nagar in Karachi’s Central district, during a recent group discussion. What was once a vibrant, tightly knit area where neighbours knew each other by name and children played freely in open streets, now feels suffocated.

“Water barely reaches our taps, and the streets that once bustled with life are too cramped to even walk properly,” he shared. Over the last two decades, rapid urban densification has quietly chipped away at the liveability of many such neighbourhoods of the port city, forcing families like Arif’s to consider relocating in search of the basics: clean water, reliable electricity, and access to open spaces and parks.

As Karachi’s population grows, so does the pressure on those already struggling to find a place within it. With no coherent policy or planning framework in place, the city’s increasing demand for affordable housing — especially among low- and middle-income groups — is colliding with a harsh urban reality. An overwhelming 68 per cent of Karachi’s population falls into the low-income bracket, with another 22pc in the middle-income tier, yet rising property prices are pushing these groups into increasingly cramped and compromised living conditions.

Unsustainable reality

Discussions with real estate agents, builders, and local residents — conducted as part of a research project at NED University — have uncovered the complex web of interactions driving housing trends in Karachi’s lower-middle-income areas. The study explores the mechanisms of urban densification and its impact on low-income communities, focusing on areas such as Delhi Colony, Punjab Colony, Paposh Nagar, Lyari, Paharganj, and Taiser Town.

According to the latest census, the average household size in Pakistan stands at 6.4 members, and 55pc of households are multi-generational, per a 2019 United Nations (UN) report. While the joint family system remains the cultural norm, urban centres have seen a shift toward nuclear living arrangements. However, among middle- to low-income groups, this trend is reversing — families that once lived separately are now merging back into joint households, as children or younger siblings get married but cannot afford independent housing due to financial constraints and rising property prices.

To cope with the growing demand for space, families in urban neighbourhoods are adding floors or extending their homes — often informally and without regulatory oversight. These unplanned expansions may be a practical response to pressing needs, but they also contribute to overcrowding, overstretched resources, and a steady decline in living conditions.

This brings us to critical questions: What housing options are truly available to these families and what quality of life do they offer? Are residents simply adapting to an unsustainable reality, or is there still a path forward — one that leads to more inclusive and well-planned housing solutions?

Our research has revealed various forms of rising densification, particularly in older neighbourhoods near economic hubs. Plot sizes in these areas typically range from 40 to 133 square yards, with some larger plots of 240 and 400 sq-yds. As space tightens and families grow, residents are finding creative yet often improvised ways to meet their housing needs. The study identified several common strategies:

• Adding lightweight floors to existing structures to make room for expanding households.

• Financing these expansions through personal savings or loans, especially among families unable to afford relocation.

• Selling plots to builders — often as a way to resolve inheritance disputes — who then construct multi-storey buildings and sell off individual floors to nuclear families.

• Subdividing plots among family members. For example, in Delhi Colony, plots originally measuring 120 sq-yd were subdivided into 40 sq-yd sections, later developed into multi-storey units with narrow staircases and compact bathrooms.

The economic and structural toll

The pursuit of affordable housing in Karachi is riddled with soaring property prices, shrinking living spaces, poor construction quality, and widespread bribes to authorities for infrastructure access and unauthorised additions.

At the same time, despite the clear strain on infrastructure, utility connections, whether for electricity, gas, or water, are extended without penalty. Authorities base approvals on the covered area of a plot rather than the number of housing units, allowing builders to add floors with minimal scrutiny. When additional units are built, monthly charges may increase according to informal rules, but no official objections are raised.

In a city where owning a home is deeply tied to dignity, security, and social identity, the desperation to secure housing has reached critical levels. Overcrowded living conditions, poor construction, and lack of oversight have made urban poverty not just visible but normalised.

Numerous incidents of collapsing walls, roofs, and entire buildings have also been reported in some settlements. In September 2024, the wall of an adjacent building collapsed onto the temporary roof of a neighbouring plot in Paposh Nagar, killing one person. In another case from August 2024, the roof of a 60-square-yard plot in Lyari collapsed after heavy rain, resulting in two deaths and five injuries.

Risk of poor construction practices

In most cases, the responsibility for reconstruction or additional construction falls to the builder, contractor, or local mason. Focus group discussions with local communities highlighted that prospective property owners often lack awareness of structural safety, with many expressing sentiments like, “It’s good as long as it’s standing” or “…at least it’s our shelter.” These statements reflect desperation, naivety, limited choices, and a willingness to compromise safety for the sake of having a home.

For low-income families, owning a house carries immense value — not just as shelter, but as a form of economic security, often used as collateral to navigate financial and social instability. Yet, the focus on immediate need frequently overshadows critical concerns like structural integrity and long-term safety. This trade-off is deeply concerning.

Contractors and masons, aware of the owners’ limited knowledge and tight budgets, often exploit this gap, cutting corners for profit. Regulators typically intervene only when buildings become visibly oversized, by which time much of the construction (rushed and without proper curing) has already compromised safety. In pursuit of quick solutions and short-term gains, lives are being put at risk — a price far too high for a home meant to provide protection.

While financial constraints may lead residents to overlook safety, the ultimate responsibility for enforcing structural standards rests with regulatory bodies. However, weak enforcement, irregular inspections, and gaps in monitoring have allowed unsafe construction practices to become common.

Arif Patel, Chairman of the All Nazimabad Builders and Developers Association, stated that the association has a clear policy — any building with three or more floors, approved by the SCBA, must undergo regular inspections and comply with all safety regulations. On paper, the responsibility is acknowledged. However, he admitted that in practice, these inspections are often poorly conducted, and construction quality frequently falls short of required standards.

Structural instability is one of the most primary concerns in poorly constructed buildings. Walking through these neighbourhoods, one can often observe buildings swaying vertically, indicating misalignment or structural tilt. Upon closer inspection, the flaws become even more alarming: reinforcement appears minimal, with low-grade steel bars used sparingly, and horizontal ties either inadequate or entirely missing. Concrete blocks and plaster contain a higher proportion of sand than certified, and the concrete is inadequately watered and cured, compromising its binding strength.

Although many of these structures begin as low-rise buildings, additional storeys are often added without reinforcing the foundation, risking long-term stability. Residents reported that new constructions, often completed in haste, show significant water leakage during rains — a result of poor materials, inadequate insulation, and flawed plumbing. “This and poor insulation are the second most pressing issues faced by these buildings,” said Arif Hasan, architect, urban planner and an advisor to this research.

Final-year architecture students from NED University, while documenting Delhi Colony, came across a collapsed corner building. Upon further investigation, they learned that many adjacent buildings in the area share structural loads with neighbouring aligned structures, often causing them to tilt. In this particular case, the corner building had borne the combined load of multiple structures and had collapsed more than once. The area’s construction is critically unstable, and much of it is at risk of collapsing in a domino effect during a natural disaster, such as an earthquake.

In contrast, recent commercial buildings in these areas tend to have better construction quality, driven by higher rental and ownership prices.

Both Delhi Colony and Paposh Nagar were originally planned as settlements but have since undergone informal developments, leading to narrower streets, increased building densities and heights, above-ground extensions, and a decline in housing quality. As the floors rise, the building’s structural stability becomes a concern. With each added floor, walls and roofs tend to become thinner, compromising insulation. While taller buildings receive ample breeze, they may be structurally unsafe and accessible only via long, narrow staircases, making them inconvenient.

Increased density and infrastructure strain

On a 40 or 60 sq-yd plot, initially intended to house a single family of six, there are now often four or more families living in vertically expanded buildings. This dramatic increase in occupancy places strain on essential services such as water, gas, and electricity, often multiplying the original requirements fourfold and extending the pressure to surrounding areas as the trend spreads.

In many cities around the world, property and infrastructure taxes are calculated based on the number of families occupying a property. However, in these densely populated residential neighbourhoods, the lack of such regulation is creating serious challenges in maintaining consistent access to basic services, compounding the daily struggles of residents.

Access to water is often constrained, with the availability of safe drinking water emerging as the most urgent concern among broader infrastructural challenges. As new buildings rise and permissions are obtained from the SBCA, additional floors are often approved following the payment of penalties. However, what the SBCA overlooks in this changing morphology is the increasing number of families and individuals residing on the same plot. Despite these approvals, the capacity of utility services — particularly water and sewerage pipelines — remain unchanged, resulting in mounting pressure on already overstretched systems.

The deterioration of our built environment — seen in both crumbling buildings and failing infrastructure — is not a coincidence but a consequence. Limited housing options, inadequate financial support for low-income populations, neglect in urban planning, and the unchecked pursuit of profit have all converged to erode the quality of life in underserved neighbourhoods. Without intentional reform and inclusive planning, these communities will continue to bear the cost of a system that has long ignored their needs.

Header Image: A dense cluster of compact housing in Paposh Nagar

In the 1930s, the British Raj summered in Quetta. While day temperatures could reach the blistering highs of the plains, nights in Quetta were far cooler than what the lowlands of the Indian Subcontinent offered. Given the lakes, mountains, and serenity of the area, Quetta’s population swelled in the summer months, adding thousands more people compared to those who generally resided in the city.

Over time, Quetta had been established as one of a string of garrison towns along the future Durand Line dividing Afghan territories with the plains and other towns including Razmak, Peshawar, Dir, and Chitral.

After the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, which had kept Punjab and Ranjit’s Sikh army as a buffer between the Afghans and the British, the colonists aimed to find a new layer of protection. This was also after the events of the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, where, after the British captured Kandahar and Ghazni, they later installed Shah Shuja in Kabul.

Shah Shuja’s tyranny and the Afghans’ displeasure at having foreign invaders and a puppet ruler being installed, rebelled incessantly and by 1843, any British they could find in their territories was slaughtered.

Soon, the Balochistan Agency was established in 1877 following the “Sandemanisation” of Balochistan, in which tribal chiefs were given patronage by the British. At the same time, Russian influence was growing in Afghanistan and in 1878, the British launched the second Anglo-Afghan War and once again occupied Kabul. The second success of the British was even more short-lived, however, since in September 1879, the British envoy was killed in Kabul, and an even larger number of British forces had to be sent to the city. By 1880, Abdur Rehman Khan became Emir of Afghanistan, and the Durand Line was drawn in 1893. The last British troops had left Afghanistan by April 1881.

An Afghanistan that the British could not quite control placed Quetta and the line of garrison towns that dotted the Durand Line at increased importance as the years went by. Quetta would later become the home of the Royal Air Force’s No. 31 Squadron, becoming one of the first military units to fly in British India. During the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May-August 1919), No. 31 Squadron RAF conducted raids in Jalalabad and, for the next decade, would be involved in military operations suppressing any insurgencies in the region.

It was through this military lens that the British primarily saw Quetta.

When the earth trembled

When the earthquake on May 31 struck a few minutes after 3am, [how do we know this so precisely? Pictures and text from government accounts of the earthquake show that the clock at the Central Post Office was stuck at 3:03am] the city of Quetta had been flattened in a mere 45 seconds. Quetta Cantonment in the north-east of the city suffered far less.

Even in the design of the city — much like the city today — the Cantonment featured wide streets. The main municipality of Quetta, however, was not only its most populous area, but also had narrow streets and houses made with mud or bricks with poor mortar. When the earthquake struck, not only could people not leave their homes since it was so early in the morning, but the narrowness of the streets meant that even if one were to miraculously dig themselves out of the rubble, navigating outside of it was impossible.

At around 3:30am, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Karslake, witnessing the city from the Cantonment, could see multiple large fires that had erupted across the landscape.

Writing 18 months after the disaster in the ‘Report on The Quetta Earthquake of 31st May 1935’, Captain LAG Pinney, who was serving as the additional political agent, Quetta, listed eight “major problems” at dawn when first light appeared.

Some of the major problems, which rose at daybreak on the morning of May 31, can be summarised as follows:

• The subordinate civil officials and the Quetta Police Force had been practically wiped out and were not available for any of their usual functions
• The most pressing need of all was the rescue of those in the city who were buried under the débris and were still alive
• Communication with the outside world had to be established - All the houses of the civilian population had been destroyed, and as food supplies were cut off, immediate shelter, food and medical attention had to be provided.
• The water supply had to be assured
• The ingress of people into Quetta had to be stopped, as the rations at the disposal of the Military were limited in quantity
• Arrangements had to be made to evacuate all survivors, particularly those who were injured, and to provide them with food and clothing for their journey
• The prevention of looting by irresponsible people in the city or by tribesmen

For the first point, the Pinney Report states that Karslake, as General Officer Commanding (GOC), gave control of his command to the Agent to the Governor General (and Chief Commissioner of Balochistan) Sir Norman Carter.

Carter and Karslake then decided that since the civilian administration and the police force had been completely decimated by the earthquake, martial law had to be imposed on Quetta immediately. Karslake then began rescue efforts, carving the city into units to expedite recovery efforts, while also imposing complete martial law over the city.

As news of the earthquake reached other cities in the morning, several people asked to help in relief efforts. Miraculously, the railway link between Quetta and the rest of British India was still operational, which not only meant that survivors could quickly be taken out of the city, but aid workers could come in to rescue those who were trapped in the rubble.

As the list in the Pinney Report shows, while rescuing survivors was one priority that emerged, Karslake and Pinney also decided to have a cordon of British troops patrolling the perimeter and streets of Quetta. Pinney wrote, “Those troops who were not required for rescue work were put on duty round the city and on patrol work in the city to prevent any untoward events, and to deal with the various outbreaks of fire which occurred.”

The controversies

Official British accounts mention repeatedly that a cordon was thrown around the city because of a fear of looting from Pashtun and Brahui tribesmen. While Quetta today is predominantly a Pashtun city, Quetta in 1935 was home to a large Punjabi population, which had settled there following the Sandeman Plan. As The Times of India reported on June 17, 1935, the largest number of refugees out of Quetta were coming back to their hometowns in Dera Ghazi Khan, Lahore, Amritsar, Gujranwala, Multan, Rawalpindi and Ludhiana.

Workers and entrepreneurs had gone to Quetta not only for its climate, but also for work, the remittances of which they would send back to their hometowns. The Government of Punjab had to send in police and medical staff to aid in evacuation efforts and tend to refugee camps, the largest of which were at Quetta’s Racecourse and Polo Ground.

Meanwhile, rumours were also rife, in which it seems that word had gotten out that the city would be “sealed” or that it would be completely levelled with dynamite. According to The New York Times, Indian leaders protested against any measures by the British to completely destroy the city, and referred to survivors from the Bihar Earthquake of 1934 being found even after a week of the earthquake.

However, while this was later touted to be a confusion or a rumour, a cable to The New York Times on June 3, 1935, four days after the earthquake, came with the headline, “Quake-Ruined City Will be Abandoned” where a communique by the British government in Delhi not only wrote that the city has been sealed under military guard on medical advice, but also, “it is estimated that 20,000 corpses remain beneath the debris. There is no hope of rescuing more of the living”.

As we also see in the June 3 news report, the British Raj had quoted 20,000 people dead with 10,000 survivors — later government reports would show that 30,000 people died. The same New York Times article mentions that those survivors reaching Karachi claimed that the number of dead was much higher. On June 5, the number of dead had reached 56,000 according to an Associated Press wire. However, officially still on June 17, the Under-Secretary of the India Office, Richard Butler (later Deputy Prime Minister of the UK), placed the death toll at 40,000.

However, the greatest controversy that emerged from the time was still the matter of not allowing anyone else to enter the city. Karslake and Carter argued that there were not enough provisions, that outsiders would start looting, and that ultimately that an epidemic could arise from the sheer amount of dead bodies that were rotting inside the rubble and outside on the streets.

Efforts were underway to properly bury the bodies, and a pamphlet issued by the Raj in August 1935 titled “The Quetta Earthquake 1935” noted how, on the first day, 18,000 pounds of firewood was supplied for cremating the Hindus that had died.

The same report from August 1935 attempted to respond criticism that volunteers were not allowed to enter the city, in which while it accepted that the first 48 hours are the most critical in rescue work, it stated that “the first application from any political organisation for permission to carry on relief work was made several days after the earthquake”. Why was permission needed? The British had imposed martial law in the area and would not allow any outsiders to come in unless approved prior. The report does not mention which political organisation made the request, though newspaper articles mention that Mahatma Gandhi, with his Congress Party, had been stopped from entering the area.

Calls for inquiry

Controversy over the conduct of British troops reached a head in September 1935, when Kumaraswami Raju moved a resolution in the Legislative Assembly, where “a committee consisting of officials and non-officials be forthwith appointed to investigate the report as to whether the situation arising out of the recent earthquake in British Baluchistan, and particularly in the town of Quetta, was properly handled, particularly with regard to the search for the rescue of the living, wounded and buried, salvage of property and transference of the wounded and injured to places outside the affected area”.

Sir Abdullah Haroon was in support of the motion, and spoke on how the authorities had not only not taken the help of the honorary magistrates in Quetta, but that anyone who opposed the martial law was removed. Lalchand Navalrai then quoted a telegram from Sir Norman Carter, who had refused him permission to enter Quetta on June 3 and also refused the excavation of a building of his relative. Additionally, he spoke about how “trainloads of people left Karachi for Quetta on May 31, but they were held up at Sibi”. Lastly, quoting the opinion of “a Dewan Bahadur in Quetta”, Carter had been willing to allow volunteers in, but the military authority denied these requests.

Bhulabhai Desai, who had drafted the resolution, said that the motion “contained no charge and no insinuation” against the Raj, and speakers in the assembly were all in agreement that the army had done an incredible feat in what it had accomplished in saving human lives. However, it was a practice of the government to conduct inquiries after calamities such as famine to use as a reference in the future. Desai then read from a report (not mentioned which one) where rescue work was abandoned on June 2, and when the Mayor of Karachi (Qazi Khuda Buksh) had offered volunteers, the military had replied, “We are able to cope with all work.”

British authorities, however, felt that the resolution was unfairly putting blame on the Raj, and even Indian leaders debated against an inquiry. Sir Cowasjee Jehangir was quoted as saying that “he had never had the misfortune to hear a more atrocious speech” and that the resolution “contained malicious insinuations against the British and Indian troops and the speaker would be no party to it”. Dr Ziauddin Ahmed also explained how it would be difficult for anyone to be alive after three days of lying under debris.

Sir Zafarullah Khan, in his speech, said that the “governments are not prepared to agree to an inquiry” but were ready for the appointment of a committee to assist authorities in the salvage of property (which became the Quetta Claims Committee) and the resettlement of the civilian population.

Congress’ resolution for the formation of a committee by the Legislative Assembly was lost by 4 votes on September 21, a day after debates. Officially, 30,000 people died in Quetta; unofficially, 60,000 perished. No. 31 Squadron RAF moved to Karachi at RAF Drigh Road, today PAF Base Faisal.

Research on the Quetta earthquake of 1935 has remained shockingly limited, where anthropologists and historians can study colonial policies and particularly as they stand with reconstruction efforts following the disaster. The Directorate of Archives Balochistan has a treasure trove of reconstruction documents and has also republished the Pinney Report, which it has available for sale. Images of the earthquake surface not only on eBay auctions, but also from the children of survivors and troops who were involved in rescue efforts.

Daniel Haines at University College London has written on the lens through which tensions emerged between the Raj and South Asians following the earthquake.

A recent monograph titled ‘Acts of Aid: Politics of Relief and Reconstruction in the 1934 Bihar–Nepal Earthquake’ by Eleonor Marcussen shows that archival work on natural disasters in South Asia during the British Raj might find some pace. Marcussen analyses the role of the British Raj and civil society in rebuilding their lives following the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, which killed 7,000 people in Bihar alone, and nearly 12,000 in its total destruction.

While 60,000 people died, the 1935 Quetta earthquake is remembered as a footnote in colonial records — a logistical challenge that was overcome by the Raj rather than a human catastrophe. As we see from the lack of an independent inquiry, its memory remains fragmented, and its survivors’ voices largely absent from the official record.

Header image: The aftermath of the disastrous earthquake that shook Quetta in 1935. — photo from X/Zia Khan

There was a time: before hashtags and hostilities, when cricket on this subcontinent belonged to purer minds. I was lucky to grow up in that Karachi. A city where cricket was not a proxy for politics, but a portal into grace, grit, and genius. Our coaches didn’t teach us whom to cheer based on flags; they taught us to revere Sunil Gavaskar if we wanted to learn the art of attrition, and Gordon Greenidge if we sought the fury of a square cut in full bloom. We were taught that genius bowed to no border. Which is why, today, I feel no conflict in mourning Virat Kohli’s exit. In times like these, when vitriol comes easier than virtue, this piece is not written in protest or praise. It is written in remembrance. For the game we once loved. And the way we were once taught to love it.

There are English summers, and then there are English summers that contain Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. The former are pleasant; the latter, unforgettable. This year, the roses will still bloom, and the Barmy Army will still sing. But the air will be thinner, the echoes fainter, because this is a summer robbed of its lords. First, Rohit Sharma stepped away — quietly, gracefully. And now, so has Virat Kohli.

What remains is not merely the absence of players; it is the departure of meaning. A certain class of Test cricket, the kind that moved philosophers and CEOs alike, has drawn its curtain.

The absence feels architectural. As if two marble columns were quietly removed from a historic pavilion, with the entire structure now precariously leaning toward collapse. One could still enter, but who would stand in awe?

And yes, we will watch. Ben Stokes deserves that. The man has turned trauma into leadership and chaos into a story. He will give every ounce of himself to this series, and it is only right that we show up.

But let us not pretend. Not all cricketers are made equal. Some you watch casually; others, you rearrange your life for. Across boardrooms in Zurich, Karachi, Sydney, and Palo Alto, people rescheduled earnings calls, postponed honeymoons, and stepped out of climate summits simply to witness Kohli in whites, confronting once more the fraught architecture of the fifth-stump line. A craftsman in prolonged dialogue with imperfection, he embodied what many might recognise as the Romantic Peril of Test Cricket, the very paradox that makes the long form so intellectually and emotionally compelling.

But now? With the great ones gone, and the new ones still waiting to become legends, it’s harder to justify the same trade-offs. With Virat absent, the return on investment for five days of Test cricket has fundamentally shifted.

This is not a critique of the younger players. They are brilliant, earnest, and committed. But some of us still believe that respect is not a courtesy; it is a currency. You don’t give up five days of a sanctuary vacation or abandon a boardroom just to watch a rough diamond endure its necessary grind at the crease. You do it for the rare performer whose genius warrants the interruption of your own.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the question: why now? Why would Kohli walk away at the peak of his fitness, form, and fervour? There isn’t one reason. It never works that way.

The farewell

Great careers end the way great loves do, not with one betrayal or a single heartbreak, but with the erosion of belief.

Still, if one moment hastened this farewell, it may have been the appointment of Gautam Gambhir. His arrival may not be the cause. But it might well have been the final straw. Because when players like Kohli, Rohit, and Ravichandran Ashwin step away almost in concert, you don’t need an inquiry. You need a mirror.

Managing genius is a genius act. Ask anyone who worked with Steve Jobs, Branson, or who still survives under Elon. This isn’t about control; it’s about alignment. You don’t manage someone like Virat Kohli. You understand him. You protect his purpose. You locate his why, and you build everything else around it.

I’ve watched too many small men in large roles fumble this truth. Men who climbed ladders not because they inspired others, but because they complied better. They ended up managing teams far sharper than themselves. And predictably began dimming the lights to hide the contrast. There is no faster way to kill a company. Or a cricket team.

Gautam Gambhir, for all his grit, has never radiated the intellectual largesse required to steward players who are larger than himself. He may be a good lieutenant. But this job needs a philosopher-general, someone who understands that great players don’t just need a plan. They need belief, clarity, and a sense of shared meaning.

Design firm IDEO would call this a systemic misalignment between cultural intent and leadership archetype: a failure to preserve the tacit rituals, values, and emotional contracts that define high-performing creative ecosystems. Friends at McKinsey might frame it as a breakdown in vertical coherence, when the ethos at the top no longer resonates with the motivations of key talent.

My favourite organisational theorist today calls it a leadership incongruence error. Upon encountering my blank stare, she added: “It’s the insertion of a low-agency operator into a high-autonomy, high-purpose environment.” The result is not just friction. It is institutional dissonance.

I say: unforgivable.

Unka rutba tha, magar rooh kahin aur thi,

Jaise mehfil mein aangan ka diya le aaya ho koi

He held the rank, but his spirit wandered,

like bringing a courtyard lamp to a gathering of stars

An institutional misreading

This isn’t new. In Silicon Valley, where I live and work, the pattern is familiar. Startups are littered with the stories of brilliant founders brought to their knees not by markets, but by middling managers promoted beyond their capacity. Think of when HP chose Carly Fiorina, or when Yahoo staggered through a carousel of CEOs, or when Apple, briefly, forgot it needed Steve Jobs.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India is most culpable here. This isn’t a team in need of discipline. It is a constellation in need of choreography. And at its most delicate moment of transition, when what was needed was vision, they reached for order.

Because genius does not shrink to fit into systems, systems must grow to contain genius. That the BCCI could not see this, could not anticipate the vacuum they were creating, is perhaps the most damning evidence of all.

Kohli’s retirement is not just the end of a player’s journey. It is the culmination of an institutional misreading. The result is visible, not just in the cricket, but in the quiet goodbyes. He didn’t leave because he stopped loving the game. He left because the game stopped understanding the kind of love he gave it.

This is a failure of leadership. A failure to identify the why, and to protect it at all costs.

In every great team, the leader’s first task is not strategy. It is stewardship. To recognise the genius in the room, and to ensure that genius feels seen, respected, and called to something greater than itself. That didn’t happen here. And so, the greatest storyteller of this era has packed up his pen.

Nevertheless, the game will go on, the scoreboard will still tick. But those of us who came not just to see runs, but to feel reverence, will know: something sacred has slipped away.

Header image: Indian batsman Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket on May 12. — AFP

For Gulzar and his family of 14, a donkey is the thin line between a modest living and dire poverty. The ‘beast of burden’, as the animal is colloquially referred to, pulls the 50-year-old and his cart loaded with 1,350 kilograms of structural iron across several miles every day.

The 38-minute journey, from New Karachi to Lyari and sometimes even beyond, earns Gulzar a daily income between Rs1,200 and Rs1,600, almost half of which is spent on the donkey’s upkeep. It is the bare minimum, but it is also what keeps his head above the water.

Over the last few years, however, rising prices of donkeys and their equally high mortality rates have put Gulzar in a tight spot. “Earlier, our expenses were aligned with our earnings, but now the work has increased,” he said. “Even if you buy an animal for Rs0.2 million, there is no point; it will die before you can utilise it fully. Donkey cart owners would be wealthy if these animals didn’t die,” rued Gulzar.

In Karachi alone, hundreds of daily wage labourers like Gulzar, whose income depends on donkeys, have felt the pinch. Muhammad Islam, 56, and Muhammad Rasheed, 41, who also use their donkey carts to transport structural iron across the port city, complained that scraping by had become harder with time as fewer healthy donkeys were available domestically.

Demand and supply

Donkeys were first domesticated in Africa nearly 5,000 years ago. Precise and latest figures are hard to obtain but reports estimate 500 million poor and marginalised people are dependent on working equids (horses, donkeys and mules) globally.

In Pakistan, the population of working donkeys stands at 5.9m, with the last three years seeing a steady increase. This has successfully helped the country maintain its spot among the list of places home to the largest number of donkeys, trailing just behind Ethiopia and Sudan.

In the past few months, local media reports have highlighted a surge in donkey prices, reaching as high as Rs0.3 million. Inflation is a pertinent issue across all industries in Pakistan, but the rise in donkey prices has been linked to growing demand from a high-value buyer: China and its multi-billion-dollar ejiao industry.

For animal rights advocates, China’s interest in sourcing donkeys, particularly for their hide, is not news. Of late, however, the global trade in donkey skin has become a geopolitical phenomenon where millions of donkeys are slaughtered every year to satiate a growing demand for ejiao, a gelatin used in traditional Chinese medicine made by stewing and concentrating donkey skin.

Pakistan, due to its proximity and close diplomatic ties to China, has been of particular interest to fuel this demand.

In April 2025, Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research Rana Tanveer Hussain met with a Chinese delegation that showed an interest in establishing donkey farms in Pakistan, citing the country’s favourable breeding environment. The minister welcomed the initiative, but said any formal agreement must protect Pakistan’s local donkey population.

The ejiao industry

Named after its birthplace Dong’e County in East China’s Shandong province, ejiao is considered among the top three tonics in traditional Chinese medicine. It boasts a cultural heritage spanning 3,000 years and has gained global attention over the last few decades as companies involved in its production expanded their reach and usage worldwide.

Google Trends shows a popularity hike of the search term ‘ejiao’ around 2016, with Indonesia, Singapore, China and Hong Kong showing the most interest by region. The Hong Kong Free Press attributes this surge to the television series, ‘Empresses in the Palace’, that began airing in 2011; one of the largest ejiao producers, Dong’e Ejiao, paid for its products to be placed on the show that subsequently appeared in at least 16 episodes.

Meanwhile, the Animal Welfare Institute reports the United States as the third largest importer of ejiao products with approximately $12 million in annual imports.

But what makes ejiao so sought-after?

As per a study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology — a peer-reviewed research journal — ejiao is widely used in clinics for its biological activities of anti-fatigue, immunity improvement, tumour suppression, and anti-anaemia effect. In traditional Chinese medicine, blood deficiency syndrome (BDS) refers to the pathological state of insufficient blood, but it differs from anaemia as understood in modern medicine; while both involve a reduction of blood cells or haemoglobin, the terms arise from fundamentally different medical systems.

Blood deficiency syndrome is more prevalent in women, a difference attributed to blood loss during menstrual cycles and hormonal changes during adolescence, pregnancy, lactation and menopause, all of which increase the body’s need for iron and calcium.

In the clinical trial of the cited study, although patients were recruited regardless of sex, the researchers found that of the 220 patients, 187 were females, indicating the popularity of ejiao among women. The results showed that ejiao alleviated dizziness, a major symptom of blood deficiency syndrome in patients, while improving hematocrit results, a blood test that measures how much of a person’s blood is made up of red blood cells as opposed to plasma. Simultaneously, ejiao increased the levels of white blood cells and the absolute neutrophil count.

Despite these benefits and its widespread popularity in traditional Chinese medicine, veterinary experts insist that obtaining donkey skins for the production of ejiao compromises animal and human welfare, public health, and the environment. Risks include potential exposure to tetanus, anthrax, and other zoonotic diseases. In 2019, for instance, an equine influenza outbreak in West Africa led to the deaths of 60,000 donkeys in Nigeria, which has been partly linked to illegal cross-border donkey transport.

Between 2013 and 2016, the annual production of ejiao increased from 3,200 to 5,600 tonnes, a 20 per cent yearly growth. But in the five years that followed, the production spiked by a whopping 160pc, requiring millions of donkey skins to keep up with the demand of China’s growing middle-class population.

In 2018, China’s biggest ejiao manufacturer raised the price of its products by 6pc, a decision based on the market supply and demand of donkey hides. China’s own donkey population has gone from 5.6m in 1990 to 0.86m in 2022, a staggering 80pc collapse, compelling the industry to turn to foreign suppliers, including Africa, South America, and Asia.

Foreign suppliers

Africa is home to two-thirds of the world’s donkeys, making it a lucrative source of donkey skins for the ejiao industry. Over the years, even though some local farmers in Africa benefited from the donkey skin trade, the fluctuations in donkey prices had an adverse effect on donkey-owning families.

“In most cases in Africa, the donkeys were being used in poor households and by sick people, refugees, and people living in remote regions, especially women and children,” said Dr Lauren Johnston, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, with expertise in China-Africa relations.

“So the ejiao-related demand for donkey skins not only led to the theft of these animals from poor villages but also interrupted an entire service that donkeys provide by carrying water from a well to a house,” she explained.

“And children have to drop out of school because they instead have to walk to the well and get water because there’s no donkey anymore.”

Donkeys play a multi-pronged role in African households; they save time and energy, and uplift the living standard of the poor in remote areas.

Unfortunately, as Dr Lauren highlighted, the rising demand and price of donkeys cut their socioeconomic role. To counter this, the African heads of state agreed last year to ban the trade of donkey skin, effectively ending the legal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of donkeys. The ban shifted the spotlight to Pakistan, and the close relations between Beijing and Islamabad further contributed to it.

The two countries are among each other’s top trading partners, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly emphasised.

While the exact extent of the legal and illegal donkey skin trade over the last decade is unclear, data obtained from the General Administration of Customs (GACC) — a ministerial body monitoring the import and export of goods to and from China — shows that a total of 1,335,530 hides were imported from January to December 2023. Of these, six were countries from the African Union, namely Benin, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, and Nigeria, which exported a total of 780,021 hides. Pakistan, on the other hand, exported a total of 157,094 hides to China in 2023.

Similar data from 2024 indicates that Pakistan became the primary trading partner for hides following the African Union’s ban in February of the previous year.

It is, however, important to note that this data broadly covers all equine and bovine (cattle, buffalo, bison) skins and only reflects the legal extent of the trade without factoring in donkeys reportedly kidnapped or traded illegally.

“I can’t remember how many skins a year China had been getting from Africa, but if they can’t get those from Africa, they need to get them from somewhere else. And it seems the number one target for substituting donkey skins from Africa is Pakistan,” said Dr Lauren.

With respect to the latest meeting held in April between Rana Tanveer Hussain and the Chinese delegation, a ministry spokesperson told Dawn.com that the decision to establish donkey farms in Pakistan will be beneficial to the country’s economy as it will rely on local labor at every stage, including feeding, caretaking, and the management systems in place.

Economic asset for Pakistan

While Pakistan has predominantly supported the donkey skin trade, its official policies have contextually varied over time.

A few years ago, private Chinese companies expressed interest in animal trading with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, particularly focusing on donkeys and proposed establishing the KP-China Sustainable Donkey Development Programme to develop and enhance the donkey population for exports.

However, the proposal did not come to fruition. “We had talks with the companies, but because they were private, the proposal did not mature,” said Dr Asal Khan, director general at the KP Livestock and Dairy Development Department (Extension).

“These kinds of agreements or MoUs are government-to-government. Since all these Chinese companies were from the private sector, and their main purpose was to buy donkeys from here and take them to China, we did not allow them to do so,” he told Dawn.com, adding that the animals were a source of income for the poor.

In 2015, the Economic Coordination Council temporarily banned the export of donkey hides; the primary concern was the disposal of donkey meat, and the ban was to last until all four provincial governments devised ways to discard the meat appropriately. Reports on donkey meat being sold as beef made Pakistanis apprehensive about donkey trade because the meat of a domesticated donkey is considered inedible or haram.

According to Dr Asim Faraz, assistant professor of livestock and poultry production at Bahauddin Zakariya University, if just donkey skins were exported, the flesh was likely to be consumed locally. “So if we are to export donkeys to China, the entire animal should be exported.”

Eventually, the ban was lifted after a few years. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24, protocols were signed to enhance the country’s agricultural exports to China, including one for exporting dried chilli in July 2023 and one for dairy products, donkey hides, and heated beef in October 2023.

In fact, in November last year, at an international donkey industry conference held in China’s Liaocheng, Pakistani officials highlighted Islamabad’s potential for the donkey industry and animal husbandry to become globally competitive with its neighbour’s assistance.

Majyd Aziz, a former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, attended the event and, in an interview, said that there is a need to establish designated factories for the slaughtering and processing of hides and meat to ensure it does not circulate in Pakistani markets. “The use of donkey carts will fizzle out over time,” he predicted, adding that it was better if the government bought donkeys from cart owners and replaced them with motorcycles.

Even with its operational status uncertain at the moment, Pakistan already has a donkey slaughterhouse in the agricultural park of the Gwadar Free Zone, where plans to establish farms are underway. Its sole purpose is exports, according to Muhammad Akram, former animal husbandry commissioner at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research. “There would be no consumption or any leakage in Pakistan,” he added.

While there isn’t any specific legislation that explicitly addresses the donkey skin trade in Pakistan, there are other related laws and regulations that indirectly govern animal welfare and trade. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1890, for instance, prohibits beating, overworking, or causing unnecessary pain to animals. However, it is a colonial-era law with minimal penalties — a small fine of Rs50 to 100, depending on the offence, and imprisonment for a one or two-month period.

Furthermore, the Punjab Animal Health Act (2019) focuses on the prevention, control, containment, and eradication of animal diseases to meet the international standards of import and export of animals and animal products. The hide of a donkey is not influenced by the overall condition of the animal, so there might be little to no incentive to ensure positive health states. Such an export could be a violation of this act.

What’s at stake?

Despite the economic opportunity that the ejiao industry presents and the government’s assurances to protect the local donkey population, it is estimated that about 36m people across Pakistan are dependent on equine labour and could be affected by the donkey skin trade.

Donkeys are an integral part of many of the country’s industries; chief among them being brick kilns, transport, agriculture, waste collection, recycling and even laundry. A study conducted by equine charity Brooke in 2019 estimated that one donkey transports 1,000 kilograms of non-recyclable waste and 100 kilograms of recyclable waste daily.

Dr Sher Nawaz, regional manager of Brooke Pakistan (Sindh), explained that one equine supports approximately six people, contributing to a daily income of around Rs1,000-Rs1,500. He also pointed out that the price of larger donkey breeds has doubled in the past five to 10 years, reaching up to Rs0.15m. Smaller donkeys, previously available for around Rs15,000, now cost Rs30,000 to 40,000.

For donkey owners in Pakistan, income usually depends on the type of work they get. In the brick kilns industry, for example, earnings per animal can range from Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 per day but this amount is divided among several labourers.

Sharing an incident from the 2022 floods, Dr Sher Nawaz recalled meeting a man in Hyderabad who could not afford his own donkey, so he rented one and used it to earn a living.

“The floods left the man devastated, but he was very grateful when support arrived; he told me he had two daughters and was entirely reliant on the donkey for his livelihood,” Dr Sher Nawaz said. “For families like his, losing a donkey is catastrophic. If their donkey dies, they often have no choice but to borrow money to buy another, just to start working again.”

However, the Pakistani market is now expanding, and demand is high, particularly from across the border. People frequenting the donkey market in Karachi’s Lyari narrate coming across Chinese customers who wish to purchase donkeys for consumption.

Kaalu, 65, remembers being approached by Chinese buyers six to seven months back. “But I refused because I know they slaughter the donkeys and use their skin for cosmetic purposes,” he recounted.

On the other hand, Majeed, who also sells donkeys, said that he sold unhealthy donkeys to Chinese customers. “They are willing to buy donkeys in any condition; in fact, sometimes they end up buying ten to twelve donkeys at once,” he added.

Similarly, at the other end of the city, unhealthy and disabled donkeys are being sold in Bhains Colony for as low as Rs2,000, Rs1,500, or even Rs800 to Chinese customers, who, according to Feroz, are typically accompanied by security guards. Feroz looks after the trading ground for private stakeholders and has been in the business since 2006.

The celebrity donkeys

Besides working in labour-intensive industries like brick kilns and waste management, donkeys in Karachi are also part of another integral cultural activity — the donkey cart race, a sport that is not only a source of pride for its participants but also entertainment for the communities that partake.

Amongst other prominent names is Abdul Hussain Pattak, a seasoned donkey cart racer in the sport since 1971. “This has been a passion of mine since childhood, whether it is donkey carts or cycling,” said Pattak, humbly bragging about the accolades he collected over the years owing to his donkeys Jalebi and Naya Daur.

The donkeys used in races differ from regular ones in terms of agility, clocking speeds of 40 to 50 kilometres per hour, with Pattak’s favourites originating from Makran, Balochistan. Along with barley, their owners feed them almonds, pistachios, and milk to ensure a better build while also willingly spending up to Rs800 on their daily upkeep. Pattak, however, even spent up to Rs1,200 on the maintenance of his beloved late Dumper, a racer donkey who won him multiple trophies over 10 years.

“I was once offered Rs0.3 million for him, but I didn’t sell. I said he would live out his life with us,” he recalled.

The races themselves are informal yet organised, Pattak explained, expanding throughout the city from Mauripur Road to Drigh Road, Malir, and Landhi. It is a self-funded endeavour, where cart racers place bets on their donkeys, who race in pairs, with the winner advancing to the next round; a series of races ultimately decides the final winner that claims both victory and a small cash prize. A weekly affair held on Sundays, donkey cart races typically attract a large crowd of around 2,000 to 2,500 spectators.

More than a workhorse

A donkey is, hence, not just an economic asset or a beast of burden. It is, in essence, a sentient and social animal that develops astrong bonds with humans.

According to a paper published in the academic journal ‘Anthropology Today’, donkeys and their keepers develop a kind of ‘mutualism’ or interdependence.

The study quotes the story of a donkey keeper who chose to buy a donkey over a motorised rickshaw despite the animal’s inflated cost. In the long run, this was a more viable choice both financially and emotionally. “Donkeys take care of their keeper and other domestic animals; when they spot danger, they protect by kicking and biting,” the man remarked. A rickshaw, on the other hand, is an inert and soulless piece of machinery only useful for transporting goods and people.

Referring to the Pakistani government’s decision to export donkey hides, the author of the study and director at South Asia Research Institute, The Australian National University, Dr Kavesh told Dawn.com, “Besides the economic factor, there is also an ethical concern. People who keep donkeys develop a bond with them and see them as close companions. They have not experienced donkeys being slaughtered before. Therefore, slaughtering and sending donkeys would create an ethical dilemma that the government might find difficult to address.”

Talking about the practicality of the donkey trade, he argued that there is no sustainable mechanism for donkey production in Pakistan. “For example, cows, goats, sheep, and chickens all have a sustained breeding mechanism, with access to veterinary hospitals, training of vets, associations (such as the Pakistan Poultry Association, etc.), and widespread local knowledge in villages. The reproduction of donkeys either happens in the wild or through some specialised dealers. There are not many specialised donkey dealers, so it will be crucial to see how the excessive demand could keep up with the limited supply.”

Unlike cows and chickens, who start breeding much earlier and more frequently, donkeys are slow to reproduce with an average gestation period of 365 days, following which they typically bear a single foal.

Long pregnancies and other species-specific factors mean that it is challenging to breed donkeys en masse like cattle, so Pakistan would need an enormous breeding herd and other infrastructural protocols to fuel donkey hide demand. Without these, donkeys might likely in fact be sourced from families that depend on them for their livelihoods.

Sustainable alternatives

In order to help protect donkeys from exploitation, Siân Edwards, the campaigns head at charitable organisation The Donkey Sanctuary, said there is a need to spread awareness of the skin trade and lobby governments to ban the trade or slaughter. Although the charity does not currently operate in Pakistan, it recognises that there are donkeys in South Asia, and its proximity to China makes it appealing for Beijing to source donkey skins.

“Awareness about the demand and ejiao products will also support the end to the trade if consumers decide not to buy, or indeed if the producers use less or no donkey skin and perhaps switch to a bio-identical lab-grown donkey collagen,” she said.

In October last year, animal welfare groups delivered over 370,000 petition signatures to Amazon to ban the sale of ejiao-based products, citing the slaughter of an estimated five million donkeys annually. A number of ejiao products are still available on the market, albeit with limited popularity. Data obtained using an Amazon analytics tool, Helium 10, shows that over the 26 months since it became available in December 2022, the price of one ejiao product consistently remained at $26.59, with relative sales hikes in April 2023 and October 2024. The data also revealed a low listing score of 6.8 (out of 10), indicating that it does not perform well in search results and customer engagement.

In recent years, cellular agriculture has also grown in popularity as a way of manufacturing products that would traditionally require harvesting from animals. A study published in the Annual Review of Food Science and Technology suggests that the priority of cellular agriculture is to manufacture agricultural products that are similar on a molecular level to those made via traditional agricultural methods.

However, cellular agriculture based on animal cells and tissue cultures is still in its infancy.

Furthermore, with ejiao originating from China’s Dong’e County and being revered as a rich cultural heritage and an integral part of traditional Chinese medicine, it is debatable whether lab-grown alternatives would come close to satisfactorily meeting the ejiao demand.

According to Dr Lauren, “This [ejiao] is such an ancient elixir — even if it’s just a placebo — it’s such a deep and rich placebo. The donkey is sacred to different people for different and contradictory reasons. And that’s just what makes this trade the most amazing. So you have these sorts of clashing values of the donkey; unfortunately, the donkey doesn’t breed very quickly, so it’s not possible to suddenly create lots of donkeys to meet this clashing demand.”

Header image: Subdued donkeys tied to carts stand in Lyari. — All photos by author

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is all set to unveil next year’s budget on June 10. In the days leading up to his much-anticipated budget speech on the floor of the National Assembly, much is being discussed in the public domain on what could be and shouldn’t be on the government’s priority list.

At a pre-budget meeting last week, Aurangzeb promised to shift the tax burden away from the salaried class and the documented sector to others through digitisation. He hinted at significant steps towards the compulsory use of digital payments to maximise a cashless economy and increase documented transactions.

At a public event the same week, he also announced that the upcoming federal budget would introduce “bold measures” to steer the national economy in a strategic direction.

Dawn.com reached out to leading economists for their thoughts on the upcoming budget. Here’s what they had to say:

Not just a spreadsheet exercise

Ali Hasanain, associate professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management and Sciences, said that the government faces a uniquely narrow policy corridor as the country prepares to table its federal budget for the fiscal year 2025-26.

“On one side lie our binding fiscal constraints, which demand a primary surplus of 1.6 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) and steep revenue enhancements if we are to find a path out of our debt. On the other hand is a range of domestic and geopolitical pressures, from defence sector demands to the fallout of intensifying global tariff wars, particularly between the US and China.”

“The defence budget, though nominally growing, has shrunk dramatically in real terms over the past five years — by nearly $4.6 billion according to Jane’s Defence Budgets. Restoring defence purchasing power is a top priority, especially after recent skirmishes on Pakistan’s eastern border,” he stated, referring to the recent Pakistan-India escalation.

However, a knee-jerk reaction would be folly, Hasanain noted, adding that full nominal recovery of that spending would consume an additional 1.13pc of GDP — nearly the entire fiscal buffer painstakingly constructed under the International Monetary Fund programme. “Doing so risks derailing hard-won macroeconomic gains, would almost certainly crowd out critical social and development spending, and ultimately — due to its unsustainable nature —defeat the goal of sustainably improving our regional security outlook.”

“The government has shown its intent to broaden the tax base through new levies on retailers, wholesalers, and petroleum sales, while also offering some relief to the salaried class. These are steps in the right direction, but they will test political capital and administrative capacity alike,” the academic commented.

At the same time, he highlighted that the global trade environment is darkening. With the US and EU considering tariff escalations on Chinese electric vehicles and other AI-intensive exports, Pakistan must prepare for further volatility. “We should be creating fiscal space to reposition our export sectors, attract diverted FDI, and invest in logistics and trade facilitation. A budget that is locked into the past — whether via subsidies or unreformed pensions — risks missing the window to adapt.”

“In short, this budget is not just a spreadsheet exercise. It is a test of vision. Pakistan must demonstrate that it can meet its defence needs without compromising its economic future — and that it is ready to claim a place in the new global industrial realignment. That will require discipline, but also courage to prioritise what builds long-term resilience over short-term optics,” Hasanain added.

Towards a private-sector-oriented economy

“The upcoming budget will continue to prioritise macroeconomic stability,” said macroeconomist Ammar H Khan. “It is expected that the budget will continue to focus on maintaining a primary surplus, while utilising available room in financing costs to reallocate the same to incremental defence allocation, and infrastructure development.”

He emphasised that rationalising expenditures should remain a key priority; any laxity in this regard can lead to higher deficits and, eventually, higher debt to finance.

“Any adventures in extracting growth through higher government spending, or import-driven consumption, may lead to a short-lived growth spurt followed by another few years of low-to-no growth,” Khan said. “Macroeconomic stabilisation should be prioritised, and a move away from import-driven consumption-oriented growth, to an investment-driven and export-oriented growth model is the only way forward.”

“A potential tariff liberalisation regime, wherein excess duties and tariffs are expected to be either completely removed or rationalised, can be a highlight for the budget, as that would signal a shift away from a protected trade regime, to a more export-oriented regime,” he stated, adding that taxes on imports are effectively taxed on exports, and rationalising the same is the only way forward if “we want to move towards an export-oriented growth structure”.

The evolving composition of tax revenues would be critical, the macroeconomist noted. “Any excess reliance on salaried employees, or higher indirect taxes, is only going to expand the informal economy, while chipping away at any efforts for deepening the tax net,” he explained, adding that the current taxation structure is regressive at best, actively discouraging any value addition.

“It makes more economic sense to evade the tax net by producing low-value-added products, as any transition towards higher value-added attracts a significant tax, which makes the business uncompetitive. Similarly, the tax delta that exists between the formal and informal economy is substantial, which penalises entrepreneurs taking risks,” he explained. “One expects that some of this would change if we are to move towards an indigenous, economic-output-oriented growth structure, rather than one that only relies on imports.”

Speaking of the upcoming budget, he said it is expected to gradually transition towards a more private-sector-oriented economy, with a greater focus on enhancing formal savings, in a way that the same can be converted into investments. “The inability to expand the savings net, while imposing more taxes to extract another ounce (there is no pound left anymore) of flesh, will only constrain growth in the mid-to-long term.

“The expectation here is that the budget will prioritise stabilisation, and slowly transition towards growth, rather than going all out for growth, and sacrificing any gains made in the last few years in the process,” Khan added.

Is the government ready to break from routine?

“The budget 25-26 should be grounded in facts, centred around people’s needs, supportive businesses, and fully transparent,” stressed economic journalist Afshan Subohi.

“The government must move away from policies that disproportionately burden the voiceless majority to compensate for inefficiencies in governance and systematic flaws in the energy sector,” she stressed. “Rather than relying on token cash handouts, the budget should prioritise the revival of agriculture and industry to spur job creation and offer citizens the opportunity to earn a dignified livelihood.”

She emphasised that the tax structure must be reformed to make it more progressive by increasing the share of direct taxes by at least 5pc points. “It is unjust to impose income tax on families subsisting below the poverty line; the income tax exemption threshold should be raised to Rs1,300,000 from the current Rs500,000. The tax rates on the middle class must be scaled down.”

The journalist was also of the opinion that the rate of super tax should be moderated, while the tax net should be broadened. Moreover, she continued, the government must reduce the petroleum development levy to ensure that the benefits of falling global oil prices are passed on to the masses.

“Whenever there is a resource crunch, the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) is the first to face cuts. In the current fiscal year, under 50pc of the chopped PSDP has so far been disbursed. Given the private investor’s reluctance to invest in the current conditions, the government must not only increase development spending but also ensure its timely disbursement.

“It should also engage with the military hierarchy to explore the possibility of funding additional security-related needs through their commercial ventures, at least for the next fiscal year,” she said.

Afshan highlighted the need for the federal government to shut down redundant departments, which will cut recurring costs, tighten oversight of overseas travel and wasteful spending, and promote technology by supporting startups through incentives, policy support, and funding access.

“It is high time the government takes decisive steps to improve the collection and dissemination of relevant economic data and encourages provinces to systematically report key economic indicators through regular publication of provincial economic surveys.

“These suggestions align with IMF guidance and serve Pakistan’s long-term interests. The real test is whether the government is ready to break from routine and embrace a new path,” she added.

Military budget — the big job

Economist and academic Aadil Nakhoda said that the finance ministry has found itself facing significant challenges as the upcoming budget not only involves plans to cut import duties and tariffs, impose petroleum levy and carbon taxes, but also increase the military budget amid the possibility of intense border conflicts.

“The tariff liberalisation involves a drastic reduction of customs tariffs to 7pc in the next five years, while reducing the number of duty slabs from five to four and peak tariffs on imports from 20pc to 15pc. The revenues from customs tariffs may decrease by more than Rs 250 billion.

“However, the government expects that the increase in economic activity because of these drastic cuts may lead to not only higher revenue generation from direct taxes but also indirect taxes as import volumes subsequently increase due to the measures.”

According to Nakhoda, incentives to purchase imports from informal and grey channels may see a significant reduction as tariffs fall. Hence, the revenue may increase even without incurring significant losses, as importers may formally declare their imports to the government.

“Further, it is expected that exporting activities may increase as businesses find not only greater competition in the domestic market due to the increase in competing imported varieties, but may also adopt more efficient production methods in the face of increasing competition. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to improve the domestic business environment through market reforms such that innovation is encouraged.”

The economist further predicted that the government was also likely to increase the petroleum levy on fuel products and impose carbon taxes on older vehicles. “Both these measures may increase government revenue, but at the same time push consumers towards more environmentally friendly substitutes, lowering carbon emissions and improving the standard of living.”

Therefore, replacing older technologies with more efficient ones is also likely to boost efficiency and productivity. It may also result in lowering the demand for imported fuel products, which is a major component of the import bill, he added.

Lastly, Nakhoda highlighted that the military budget will inadvertently increase as the risk of border conflicts is high, but alerted that this may hurt development programs as well as funding of other sectors such as health and education.

“However, the recent conflict has seen a shift from using army personnel as a primary resource towards the use of machines and technology. This itself can have an impact on not only the financing of the military budget but also the size of the army,” he said.

Need to embed sustainability measures

“There are a few things that will remain standard in the budget, which will focus on stabilisation because it is being prepared along with the IMF,” said Sajid Amin Javed, who writes on macroeconomic policy.

According to him, not much relief can be expected in the budget, and whatever will be there will be minimal. “The government’s efforts to provide relief to the salaried class … that discussion is still pending with the IMF. So the first two to three slabs of the salaried class may get some sort of relaxation.”

He believes that there might not be a lot of effect on the tax rate, especially the upper slabs. But it is expected that taxable income will be increased from Rs600,000 to the Rs1-1.2 million range. “The government is trying to avoid new taxes as it has realised that there already is a lot of burden on people within the tax net.”

The macroeconomist also believes that Pakistan will see an increase in terms of defence expenditure.

“Another thing I see, as far as commitment and announcement is concerned, is bringing new sectors into the tax net, such as agriculture and textiles,” he said. “There will be some leniency for the real estate sector, whether it is explicit or implicit. Because the government realises that if economic activity needs to be increased and the growth rate target for next year needs to be increased, the real estate sector plays a pivotal role in it.”

So, tax rates can be adjusted, and proposals have been sent to the IMF.

For the common man, Amin noted, the upcoming budget will be “balanced” as compared to the previous two years. But it won’t have a lot to give, he warned.

“In my opinion, the government should try its best to provide relief to the salaried class, and the taxable income should be increased. Another direction that the government needs to set is to what extent these taxes will support investments, because I feel the focus this year, too, will be on revenues, as our target is huge.

“Last year, we saw that we couldn’t meet our targets even with high inflation. The government must balance, because we have been very focused on revenues for the IMF programme and meeting its targets. Our focus was also stabilisation, which is why taxation policies were tight. But now I feel the government must embed sustainability measures in the budget. And one big indicator in this is to support livelihoods for the common man,” the macroeconomist pointed out.

On a positive note, Amin said that he felt the budget will not be as tough as the previous two times, but at the same time, it will also not be as relaxed as the government wants it to be.

“In the context of PSDP, some schemes that were subject to delays or were at an early stage may be shelved, and the angle of expenditure reprioritisation of the IMF will be incorporated. We can expect this year’s PSDP to be a little less than that of last year,” he added.

“It’s brought me some closure,” said Shafaq Zaidi, a school friend of Noor Mukadam, reacting to the Supreme Court’s May 20 verdict upholding both the life sentence and death penalty for Noor’s killer, Zahir Jaffer.

“Nothing can bring Noor back, but this decision offers a sense of justice — not just for her, but for every woman in Pakistan who’s been told her life doesn’t matter,” Zaidi told Inter Press Service (IPS) over the phone from Islamabad. “It’s been a long and painful journey — four years of fighting through the sessions court, high court, and finally, the Supreme Court.”

Echoing a similar sentiment, rights activist Zohra Yusuf said, “It’s satisfying that the SC upheld the verdict,” but added that the crime’s brutality left little room for relief. “It was so horrific that one can’t even celebrate the judgment,” she said, referring to the “extreme” sadism Noor endured — tortured with a knuckleduster, raped, and beheaded with a sharp weapon on July 20, 2021.

Yusuf also pointed out that the “background” of those involved is what drew national attention.

Noor Mukadam, 27, was the daughter of a former ambassador, while Zahir Jaffer, 30, was a dual Pakistan-US national from a wealthy and influential family. Her father and friends fought to keep the case in the public eye, refusing to let it fade into yet another forgotten statistic.

Still, the response has been muted — many, including Yusuf, oppose the death penalty.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) recorded at least 174 death sentences in 2024 — a sharp rise from 102 in 2023 — yet not a single execution was reportedly carried out. The last known hanging was in 2019, when Imran Ali was executed for the rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Ansari.

However, Noor’s father, Shaukat Ali Mukadam, has repeatedly stated that the death sentence for Zahir Jaffer was “very necessary,” emphasising, “This isn’t just about my daughter — it’s about all of Pakistan’s daughters,” referencing the countless acts of violence against women that go unpunished every day.

The HRCP’s 2024 annual report painted a grim picture of gender-based violence against women in Pakistan.

According to the National Police Bureau (NPB), at least 405 women were killed in so-called honour crimes. Domestic violence remained widespread, resulting in 1,641 murders and over 3,385 reports of physical assault within households.

Sexual violence showed no sign of slowing. Police records documented 4,175 reported rapes, 733 gang rapes, 24 cases of custodial sexual assault, and 117 incidents of incest-related abuse — a chilling reminder of the dangers women face in both public and private spaces. HRCP’s media monitoring also revealed that at least 13 transgender individuals experienced sexual violence — one was even killed by her family in the name of honor.

The digital space offered no refuge either. The Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) recorded 3,121 cases of cyber-harassment, most reported by women in Punjab.

Justice remains elusive

But numbers alone can’t capture the brutality — or the deep-rooted disregard for women that drives it.

“We recently took a man to court and secured maintenance for twin baby girls,” said Haya Zahid, CEO of the Karachi-based Legal Aid Society (LAS). “The father divorced their young mother while she was still in the hospital — just because she gave birth to daughters.”

LAS offers free legal aid to those who can’t afford it, handling cases like rape, murder, acid attacks, forced and child marriages, and domestic violence.

Bassam Dhari, also from LAS, recalled Daya Bheel’s gruesome murder, which took place after Noor Mukadam’s but failed to stir national attention because it happened in a remote village in Sindh’s Sanghar district.

“She was skinned, her eyeballs removed, her breasts chopped off, and her head severed from her body,” said Dhari.

He said the postmortem report confirmed that she was neither raped nor sexually assaulted, and the attack did not appear to be driven by rage or revenge.

While Mukadam’s family may have found closure, justice remains elusive for thousands of Pakistani women.

“Noor Mukadam’s case is indeed a rare instance where justice was served,” said Syeda Bushra, another lawyer at the LAS.

“It’s not that there aren’t enough laws to protect women and children — far from it,” said Bushra. “There are plenty of laws, but what good are they if investigations are weak?” According to her, only a small percentage of women can seek redress. “Justice is denied or delayed every single day,” she added.

“The problem is that these laws are crafted in a social vacuum,” observed Fauzia Yazdani, a gender and governance expert with over 30 years of experience working with national governments, the United Nations (UN), and bilateral development partners in Pakistan.

She acknowledged that although many progressive, women-friendly laws have been passed over the years, they’ve failed to resonate in a society resistant to change. “Laws are essential, but no amount of legislation can end violence against women if the societal mindset remains misogynistic, patriarchal, and permissive of such crimes,” she said.

Buying justice through blood money

At the same time, Dahri highlighted critical flaws in the justice system.

In Pakistan, where the death penalty remains legal under its Islamic status, such sentences can be overturned through the diyat (blood money) law, which allows perpetrators to buy forgiveness by compensating the victim’s family.

“In our country, money can buy anything,” said Dahri. “This blood money law is routinely abused by the rich and powerful to literally get away with murder.”

He stressed the urgent need to reform these laws. “Many families initially refuse compensation, but intense pressure and threats — especially against the poor — often force them to give in.”

In 2023, 10-year-old Fatima Furiro’s death might have gone unnoticed if two graphic videos—showing her writhing in pain, then collapsing — hadn’t gone viral. The resulting public outcry led to her body being exhumed. Her employer, a powerful feudal lord in Sindh’s Khairpur district, who appeared in the footage, was swiftly arrested.

He spent a year in prison before the case was closed, after Fatima’s impoverished family accepted blood money — despite forensic evidence confirming she had been raped, beaten, and tortured over time.

Law vs prejudice

Alongside a flawed justice system, women must battle deep-rooted social taboos — amplified by relentless victim-blaming and shaming.

“In such an environment,” said Bushra, “it’s no surprise that many women, worn down by the long and exhausting process, eventually withdraw their complaints.”

“A woman’s trial begins long before she ever enters a courtroom,” said Dahri.

In Noor Mukadam’s case, the claim of a “live-in relationship” — real or fabricated — was used by the convict’s lawyer to downgrade his death sentence for rape to life imprisonment.

“Her reputation was sullied — even in death,” said Yazdani, adding that judges should refrain from moralising and preaching.

“A judge’s verdict should rest solely on an impartial reading of the law,” said Bushra.

But as Dahri pointed out, few lawyers in Pakistan dare to say this openly. “Judges can take it personally,” he said, “and we risk facing repercussions in our very next case.”

According to Yazdani, even a few targeted reforms — like faster hearings, clearing case backlogs, setting up gender-based violence (GBV) and child protection courts, and training judges, lawyers, and police on the realities of misogyny and gender-based violence — could cut victim-blaming in half.

But she also offered a word of caution: reforms alone don’t guarantee empathy, which she called the cornerstone of real justice.

“Social change doesn’t happen overnight,” Yazdani said. “Anthropologically speaking, it takes five years for change to take root — and another ten for it to truly take hold.”

Gender balance matters in justice

Judicial gender inequality worsens the situation. Some experts argue that increasing the number of women judges and lawyers could lead to a more fair, dynamic, and empathetic justice system.

A 2024 report by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) reveals that women make up less than 20 per cent of the country’s judges, lawyers, and judicial officers — an alarming gap in a nation of over 117 million women. Of the 126 judges in the superior judiciary, only seven are women — just 5.5pc. In the Supreme Court, that number drops to two.

Meanwhile, the 26 judges of the apex court (including the chief justice) are burdened with a backlog of more than 56,000 cases — not all related to violence against women.

Bushra believes more women must be encouraged to enter the justice sector — particularly as prosecutors, police officers, and judges. “I’ve seen how distressed victims become when forced to repeat their ordeal to male officers — often multiple times,” she said.

But she emphasised that simply increasing the number of women won’t end victim-blaming or guarantee survivor-centric justice. “Everyone in the system — including women — must be genuinely gender-sensitised to overcome personal biases and deep-rooted stereotypes,” said Bushra.

Special courts

In 2021, the government passed the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act, leading to the formation of an anti-rape committee by the Ministry of Law and Justice to support victims, including setting up special courts nationwide. “Special investigation units with trained prosecutors now handle 77pc of complaints, and 91pc of cases go to special courts,” said Nida Aly of AGHS, a Lahore-based law firm offering free legal aid and part of the committee.

By 2022, Sindh had set up 382 such units. Aly noted that a survivor-centered, time-bound, and coordinated approach raised conviction rates from 3.5pc to 5pc. A national sex offenders registry, managed by police, was launched in 2024. In Punjab, all 36 districts now have crisis and protection centers offering legal and psychosocial support, though some face resource limitations.

Nearly five years after gender-based violence courts were established in Karachi, she sees a promising shift in how judges handle such cases. “Prosecutors now take time to prepare women complainants — something that never happened before,” she said.

However, she added, the number of such courts and sensitised judges remains a drop in the ocean compared to the overwhelming number of violence committed against women and such cases flooding the system across Sindh.

Header Image: Residents light candles in front of a picture of Noor Mukadam, the daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat who was found murdered, on her first death anniversary in Islamabad on July 20, 2022. (Photo by Aamir Qureshi/AFP)

This article was originally published in Inter Press Service and has been reproduced here with permission.

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is expected to present the Finance Bill 2025-26 in the National Assembly tomorrow (Tuesday). Much has been said in the lead-up to the big day; the finance minister has pledged to introduce “bold measures” to steer the national economy in a strategic direction, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stressed the need for tight expenditure controls to ensure sustainable debt servicing.

Meanwhile, the government has decided to cut allocations for almost all sectors, barring a rise in road building schemes and no changes to parliamentarians’ schemes.

While all this chatter continues, Dawn.com reached out to former finance ministers, Asad Umar and Miftah Ismail, for their input on what the government should be prioritising in the next fiscal year. Here’s their thoughts.

Asad Umar — Finance Minister [Aug 2018 - April 2019]

During the last 10 years, the fiscal deficit has averaged more than 6 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). These heavy deficits running over a long period of time have landed Pakistan in a classic debt trap. Not only are we borrowing to repay loans, we are also borrowing to pay the interest on these loans.

In fact, the level of deficit is actually understated as it has been curtailed by lowering development spending. Ten years back, for example, the fiscal deficit stood at 5.5pc; last year it was 6.8pc. This increase in deficit was despite reducing development spending by almost 3pc during this period.

The fundamental question for the government at this point is: how to increase the revenue and what expenditures to cut. No government, whether military, civilian or hybrid, has been able to expand the tax net by fairly taxing severely under-taxed sectors such as retail. Similarly, the many efforts to identify big tax evaders and money launderers and collect their due share of tax have failed. This budget must include implementation measures using the legislation enacted in the last few years regarding the sharing of information on lifestyle, asset ownership and benami (fictitious) properties. We must shut down the biggest loophole in the form of real estate being used to hide wealth by the severe under-recording of transaction prices.

This budget must lay the foundation for a structural shift

Last year’s budget placed a crushing burden on the salaried class. This budget must include a reversal of that unfair taxation. We have also now taken taxation on the documented economy to a level where it has become counterproductive. This is one of the reasons why we have seen unprecedented wealth outflows in recent years. We must now look at the beginning of a reduction in these tax rates.

The federal expenditure is dominated by interest payments, which are now more than four times the defence expenditure. This is the result of massive accumulated deficits and curtailment of low-cost external financing. Ten years ago, for instance, the deficit was financed through 40pc external finance, 40pc domestic banks and 20pc domestic non-banks. Last year, almost the entire deficit was financed by domestic banks, with external financing down to only 3pc.

This 800-pound gorilla in the fiscal room, à la interest payments, has to be dealt with on a priority basis. A mere curtailment in deficits, though necessary, will not be sufficient. Debt restructuring, which protects the financial stability of the banking system and creates fiscal space, has become absolutely essential.

Our growth rates are low and decreasing further. The GDP growth rate, which averaged around 7pc in the mid-80s, stood at 3.5pc in the last 10 years and a meagre 1.6pc in the last three years. One reason is the cut in development spending from 7pc of the GDP to a mere 2pc, to contain the fiscal deficit.

Poor and inconsistent macroeconomic policies, which led to recurring external shocks and the economy having to go into a demand compression mode every few years, have been largely to blame. The exchange rate management and trade taxation policies have had a long-term anti-export bias, putting the brakes on exports becoming an engine of growth.

However, equally important is the lack of any kind of meaningful and long-term growth strategy. Macroeconomic stability is a necessary but an insufficient condition for sustained growth. Our economic structure is low value-added and static. Unless we produce products and services of increasing complexity and value, we will be unable to compete in the global market and generate a sustainable and non-inflationary growth momentum.

In the first two decades of this century, Pakistan’s economic structure remained virtually unchanged. Vietnam, on the other hand, saw a dramatic rise in the complexity index, indicating a marked shift to more sophisticated products. As a result, during this period, Vietnam’s exports grew at a rate almost six times higher than Pakistan’s.

This budget must lay the foundation for this structural shift. We must break out of this low-value-added trap that the economy is in. Growth engines must be tradables, have high job intensity, be globally competitive and help move to higher value. The fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, skill development, pursuit of foreign direct investment and all other government policies and actions must be aligned with this strategy.

To meet the immediate need for growth, barring huge external deficits, it is essential to focus on measures to help farmers. One of the key reasons for the extremely weak growth in the current fiscal year is the terrible state of agriculture. Farmers have suffered terribly due to multiple factors, and the budget must address some of these, including a close look at farm input costs, which have gone up drastically.

Miftah Ismail — Finance Minister [April 2022 - September 2022]

The Pakistani government’s fiscal or budget policy suffers from two fundamental structural issues and two political issues that render our budgets both anti-growth and anti-middle class.

The first structural issue comes from constitutional provisions that don’t allow the federal government to tax agricultural income, while it can tax all other types of income or property. These provisions together give the rich a means to evade income taxes and also keep their wealth out of the tax net, perpetuating income inequality in the country.

The second structural issue is the sharing of about 60pc of federal taxes with provinces. Given that provinces are awash in cash and have surpluses most years, and given that the federal government is running huge deficits, a change in the National Finance Commission (NFC) is particularly warranted. This will reduce the overall tax burden on citizens and also allow Pakistan to achieve economic growth, something we have not really seen in two decades.

The NFC refers to the National Finance Commission, a constitutional body mandated to determine how the federal government distributes financial resources (taxes, grants, etc.) to the provinces.

This year, the total taxes collected by the Federal Board of Revenue will be Rs12,000 billion, and yet, the budget deficit will amount to approximately Rs8,500bn. Now, to balance the budget, the FBR wouldn’t just have to raise an additional Rs8,500bn. It would in fact have to raise an additional Rs14,500bn, because 60pc of the FBR revenue goes to the provinces. We are talking about taxes totalling Rs26,500bn or 22.5pc of the GDP, which is substantially higher than the US federal government tax-to-GDP ratio of 16pc and more than our current taxes.

Hence, the possibility of substantially reducing the deficit under the current NFC award is remote.

As long as we have a large budget deficit, our country will not be able to post high growth rates

But why do we need to balance the budget anyway? Why not just keep borrowing? Well, it turns out that when the government borrows money to finance the deficit, the preferred method is to borrow from the private sector. But since our private sector’s savings are less than the investments, it is unable to finance the government’s deficit. Therefore, the government has to print money or borrow from foreign sources, which means that we keep running a perpetual current account deficit (if we borrow from foreigners) and/or end up with a depreciated currency and high inflation (if we print money).

Therefore, as long as we have a large budget deficit, our country will not be able to post high growth rates. We have seen this since 2010, and especially in the last three years, when the per capita income of Pakistanis decreased.

As stated above, there are also two political problems with our fiscal policy. The first being that we are unwilling to tax the wealthy and happy to shift the burden onto the middle class. For instance, we tax people with a monthly salary of only Rs50,000, while agricultural landlords are exempt from taxes. Either that, or we are eager to tax, say, a small weaving unit — the backbone of our textile export — but lack the courage to tax large estates and properties.

Even our taxes on goods such as sales tax, excise tax, and customs duties disproportionately affect the poor and the middle class.

The second political problem is that our tax and tariff codes are solely focused on raising revenues, lacking consideration of their economic damages; think of the 38.5pc tax rate on salaried incomes. This policy is either forcing people to migrate out of Pakistan or to cheat on taxes.

On the other hand, there is the super tax of 10pc on the income of exporters. This is the government telling firms that if you export and earn more, we will penalise you with a 10pc super tax. In a similar vein, customs duties or sales tax are imposed on the import of solar cells, but the same is nowhere to be seen on finished solar panels. These are all counterproductive steps that should be fixed in the upcoming budget.

Moreover, the recent escalation with India has brought home the point that we need a well-financed defence sector that can ensure a credible yet conventional deterrent against the neighbour. This means our armed forces would require more resources. To finance this, I would like to see a substantial reduction in federal and provincial “development” spending, from this year’s Rs2,500bn to no more than Rs1,300bn next year. The Rs1,200bn in savings can then be used to increase defence spending and provide much-needed relief to both the salaried class and the very poor.

Finally, rather than giving subsidies and distorting prices, I would like to see the budget for the Benazir Income Support Programme be raised to Rs1,500bn so that we can finally make a dent in poverty, stunting and illiteracy.

The government on Monday released the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25, revealing key figures for the fiscal year ending June. Key among them was the economy expanding by 2.7 per cent during the outgoing year.

The government had initially targeted a GDP (gross domestic product) growth at 3.6pc, but lowered it last month. The International Monetary Fund expects real GDP to grow by 2.6pc in FY25 and for the economy to grow 3.6pc in FY26.

In his foreword to the survey — a key pre-budget document — Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said Pakistan’s economy had been globally acknowledged for achieving macroeconomic stabilisation in the outgoing fiscal year.

Pakistan is consistently advancing on an upward trajectory, built upon investment-friendly reforms, enhanced domestic savings, and increased foreign direct investment, with GDP growth projected at 5.7pc over the medium term, he said.

Dawn.com spoke to analysts regarding their take on the economic survey, particularly concerning four things: the GDP growth rate, the GDP per capita, the large-scale manufacturing deficit and Pakistan’s tax revenue to GDP.

Here is what they had to say:

Weak demand, high energy costs stalling LSMs

The 2.7pc annual growth figure reflects a sharp rebound of growth in the fourth quarter, which appears inconsistent with earlier quarterly trends, said Ali Hasanain, an associate professor of economics at LUMS. “Large-scale manufacturing has contracted, and agriculture is practically stationary, with continued concerns about the accuracy of livestock growth numbers.”

He commented that the GDP per capita number, expressed in current USD, was a poor indicator of the welfare of the average citizen at a time when the dollar has stayed in a narrow corridor since the end of 2023. “Until demand normalises and trade grows, we must remain cautious in interpreting indicators expressed in dollar terms.”

Talking about the large-scale manufacturing deficit, he said that it was struggling due to weak domestic demand, import restrictions, and high energy costs. “These are deep, structural issues. Pakistan needs to reorient manufacturing away from assembly operations, trying to ‘save’ dollars by substituting for imports, towards competitive, export-oriented industries.”

“Agriculture, retail, and real estate remain undertaxed. There has been some expression of commitment to rectify this, but the government has little substantial achievement to show in three years so far,” Hasanain added.

Pakistan needs more imports

According to economist Ammar Habib Khan, the GDP growth levels were largely aligned with the consensus. On the other hand, the GDP per capita growth was largely due to “stability of the rupee against the US dollar”.

Khan said that for large-scale manufacturing to grow, Pakistan needed more imports. “And for that, we need more dollars and more demand, which remains compressed.”

On taxes, the macroeconomist commented that the burden was largely covered by salaried taxpayers, indirect taxes and formal industries only.

Lack of engines for growth

Commenting on the statistics unveiled in the economic survey, economist Adil Nakhoda said the GDP growth rate reported is likely driven by the industry sector, which reported a growth of 4.77pc. Interestingly, this was dominated by the wearing apparel segment, which grew by 7.6pc. Apart from crops, the agricultural growth rate was quite limited, while large-scale manufacturing contracted in the fiscal year.

“Although the overall growth rate itself is not much different from the number reported in the previous year, at 2.5pc, the issue is the lack of engines for growth, as it has been limited in only a few sectors and industries. The biggest worry going into the next fiscal year is the large-scale manufacturing index. The import constraints and the lack of competitive pressure need to be reduced to revive industrial growth.”

Commenting on the GDP per capita growth, he said that it was quite surprising as it put the same at around 10pc. “Even though this is the highest since 2021-22, it has typically been higher than the calculation of the GDP growth rate. As this is adjusted for inflation, the decreasing inflation may have contributed to a higher number, as the GDP growth rate was similar.”

He noted that large-scale manufacturing had been hit by not only import constraints but also the lack of competitive pressure in the industry, as several industries in Pakistan had enjoyed protection in terms of high tariff rates and the inability to be globally competitive.

“This has particularly reduced their ability to produce goods and satisfy local demand. There needs to be a dynamic adjustment in the manufacturing sector if we are to expect any growth in it, and that has to come with an increase in competitive pressure to ensure that the manufacturing sector produces goods that can compete not only regionally but globally.”

On Pakistan’s tax revenue to GDP, Nakhoda said that the two major sectors that needed to increase their contribution to taxes were agriculture and retail and wholesale.

“The agriculture sector has always enjoyed tax exemptions that have made its contribution to tax revenue much lower than its contribution to GDP, while the retail and wholesale sector have often evaded the tax net. Their contribution needs to be increased for the burden not only to be shared equally, but the burden to be reduced on other sectors that often contribute a larger share to tax revenue than their contribution to GDP,” Nakhoda added.

Header image: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb shows a copy of the economic survey of fiscal year 2024-2025 during a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan June 9, 2025. — Reuters

In a rather noisy National Assembly session on Tuesday, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb presented the budget for the fiscal year 2025-2026, with a total outlay of Rs17.573 trillion and an ambitious 4.2 per cent growth target.

In his speech, Aurangzeb said the budget was being presented at a “historic moment”, referring to the recent Pakistan-India escalation. He stressed the need for ensuring the country’s financial security in the same way that national sovereignty was protected.

“Pakistan has now achieved economic stability and is moving towards a Pakistan that is prosperous,” he said.

Dawn.com reached out to leading economists and analysts for their key takeaways from the budget. Here’s what they had to say:

‘An anomaly’

Economist Adil Nakhoda noted that the government had reduced its outlay for the current fiscal year, which, according to him, was an anomaly. “This is likely due to the significant decline in interest payments as the government’s debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product has also declined,” he said.

He pointed out that the increase in defence expenditures was also anticipated.

“Tax collection is expected to increase. This should come via an increase in the size of the tax net rather than increasing the burden on those already in the tax net,” Nakhoda said.

He added that the main feature of the budget was the government’s plan to undertake tariff rationalisation. “Although tariff cuts have been announced, the important task is to ensure that they are not replaced with anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties to ensure better transparency in the process.”

‘Short of structural, bold reforms’

Highlighting the positive aspects of the budget, macroeconomist Sajid Amin Javed said the rationalisation of the tariff regime was a signal of opening the economy and pushing the industry to modernise and innovate. “Bringing the customs duties and other duties to zero in the next four to five years is a good policy direction.”

Tax simplification, he noted, was a very important aspect, as tax filing in Pakistan was complicated for layperson. “Another good thing is eliminating the non-filer category.”

On the flip side, Amin pointed out that on a strategic level, “this is exactly the budget that one can expect under the International Monetary Fund” — targeting stabilisation and meeting revenue targets.

“Most of the policy measures regarding taxation revolve around meeting revenue targets,” he said. “I feel this is a bid to correct the existing system in bits and pieces, but the bigger reforms that are often discussed, such as bringing wholesalers and retailers, and agriculture into the tax net, there wasn’t much said on it.”

The macroeconomist stressed that structural reforms, which were much needed to increase the tax base, were not seen. “Overall, it seems that the budget is silent on structural reforms. Even the relief, I feel, is as expected under the IMF programme.”

He also highlighted some contradictions in the budget. “On the other hand, we are saying we want to formalise the economy and increase financial inclusion, but we have increased taxes on withdrawing money from banks for non-filers from 0.6pc to 1pc, which I feel may discourage financial inclusion.”

“Overall, I feel the budget falls short on structural and bold reforms; it is a stabilisation budget formed to meet revenue targets. One more thing I am seeing is that the objective or principle guiding the budget is the incoming IMF tranche.

“There is no undue relief. There is an attempt to balance the fiscal discipline,” Amin added.

‘Rather unremarkable’

Political economist Uzair Younus believed that the budget was rather unremarkable, and that “perhaps may be the best thing about it”.

“This is because what is needed at this time is for the government to maintain an even keel and not give in to the historical tendency to generate growth through fiscal expansion,” he said.

“At the same time, however, the budgetary exercise could have been leveraged as an opportunity to signal a shift in strategy. For those left wanting reforms, perhaps the proposed trade and tariff rationalisation program will suffice in the coming months,” Younus added.

‘Misplaced priorities’

“There is some positive news: fiscal consolidation,” said Ali Hasanain, an associate professor of economics at LUMS. “We have reduced the budget deficit significantly, and we have run a primary budget surplus, which means that our expenditures for this year were less than the revenue.”

“Our debt profile will improve over time. I believe we have already seen better debt maturities in the past year, and we are going to see that the overall interest payments have gone down. Overall, the debt is moving towards stabilisation, and we are not in as bad a debt crisis as we were previously.”

He noted that the big changes seen could be thought of more as accounting discipline rather than structural reforms, “which means we have reduced expenses in development spending and cut subsidies”. While structural changes were missing, there was emphasis on discipline in spending, which Hasanain said was both good and bad.

“Thirdly, our development spending continues to look like it has distorted priorities. For example, 30pc of development spending is on transport and 5pc-6pc on education, which shows you are following an old development plan and your priorities are misplaced.”

Talking about the reduced tax bill for the real estate sector, he said it went against the grain of advice by most economists and international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. “It encourages speculative investments, and it does not improve the external sector picture.”

Moreover, the national tariff policy saw some serious tariff reductions, Hasanain said. He explained that Pakistan, over the last decade, had substantially increased its protection of certain industries such as auto and mobile manufacturing. The raw material for these industries was imported on cheap tariffs, and the final good was imported on expensive tariffs. “This type of industry is a road to nowhere because it doesn’t make you globally competitive, nor does it increase exports.”

Commenting on the overall budget, he said that it was relatively disciplined but within the status quo and political constraints. “I think structural reforms and a serious reform agenda have not manifested. When that happens, change would be seen in several areas.

“If they actually want to transform the country, it should be done by rethinking how the country is governed,” he added.

‘Hard to discern any clear direction’

“If the 2025-26 budget proposals are truly bold or strategic, the finance minister must clearly explain how. What elements in revenue generation or spending priorities distinguish this budget as one that addresses the structural flaws in Pakistan’s economic framework?” remarked senior journalist Afshan Subohi.

“If a modest 2pc-4pc reduction in income tax for salaried individuals or further trade liberalisation through reduced customs duties is being positioned as revolutionary or transformative, then, respectfully, it falls short of such claims,” she said.

Afshan was of the opinion that the 10pc salary increase for civil servants may be a welcome move for its recipients, but its impact was limited given the small proportion of the population it benefited.

“In his speech a few hours ago, the finance minister made no mention of under-taxed sectors such as wholesale, retail, or any commitment to ensure enforcement of agriculture income tax laws in provinces. While he did highlight the government’s intention to raise the tax-to-GDP ratio, he overlooked the critical issue of the imbalance between direct and indirect taxes,” she commented.

The journalist said that there was little to indicate any serious intent to make the tax regime more progressive by reducing reliance on indirect taxes, which disproportionally burdened poor consumers. “Whatever relief may have been offered to middle-class taxpayers is likely to be offset by the hike in Petroleum Development Levy, from Rs70 to Rs100, leading to significantly higher petrol prices.”

“How the budgetary measures will improve the investment climate and raise the critical investment to GDP ratio has been left for the investors to decipher. On the surface, aside from a 0.5pc reduction in the super tax and a few minor adjustments, there is little in the budget to meaningfully stimulate wealth creation or accelerate job growth,” she said.

Afshan criticised the finance minister’s speech, saying that it lacked a sense of transparency. “Beyond the numbers, it was hard to discern any clear direction.”

“While the announcement to simplify tax return forms and encourage digital filing is a welcome step, several elements were presented in a way that left audiences unclear about the substance. For instance, percentage increases were disclosed for many spending categories, but when it came to the defence budget, only the total allocation of Rs2,550bn was mentioned, conveniently omitting the percentage increase over last year.

“This selective disclosure raises questions about the government’s commitment to full transparency,” she added.

‘This is not economic strategy, it’s fiscal handcuffing’

“The FY26 budget is yet another disappointing example of policy driven more by debt obligations than by economic reality,” said Dr Mohammad Ahmed Zubair, former chief economist at the Planning Commission of Pakistan. “After grappling with stagflation in FY23 and FY24 — high inflation paired with weak growth — the economy has now slipped into outright stagnation in FY25: low growth, cooling inflation, rising unemployment, and shrinking consumer demand.” He added that any rational policymaker would see this as a moment for stimulus — spending boosts and tax relief to jumpstart growth.

“Instead, what we’re getting is a tone-deaf commitment to fiscal austerity. The government plans to slash the budget deficit from 5.6pc in FY25 to 3.9pc in FY26, and raise the primary surplus target from 2.2pc in FY25 to 2.4pc in FY26. That’s not reform — it’s retreat,” he lamented, adding that tax revenues were projected to rise a staggering 19pc, while current spending (excluding debt servicing) was targeted to rise by 8.5pc in FY26.

“Let’s be clear: this is not economic strategy, it’s fiscal handcuffing,” he said. “The debt servicing burden is dictating national priorities. Without a serious, coordinated fiscal compact — including debt restructuring and binding safeguards against future debt mismanagement — Pakistan will remain stuck in a vicious cycle of low growth, rising inequality, and deepening social pain.

“It’s time to stop pretending austerity is discipline; it’s dysfunction in disguise.”

She had only just turned 17, an occasion she celebrated with 800,000 followers on TikTok and 500,000 followers on Instagram. Her social media feed — featuring quirky, funny and optimistic content — was akin to that of any other teenager marking life’s small achievements.

But for Sana Yousaf, a bubbly girl from Chitral, this small milestone became her last. She was shot dead in Islamabad by Omar Hayat, 22, for saying ‘no’. The inspector-general of the capital police, at a press conference, classified the murder case as one of “repeated rejection”.

Hayat had called her, followed her, and stalked her while Sana repeatedly said ‘no’. To him, not being able to possess her meant she didn’t deserve to live. Unfortunately, in our society, this is a frighteningly common tale. A man looking at a woman — in this case, a teenager — across a crowded room, driving a car, at school or online, and deciding all by himself that she belongs to him.

Whether or not the girl is made aware of this proprietorship is irrelevant. But whenever she is made aware, she must accept the terms. If she refuses, he threatens to either kill himself or, in most cases, such as that of Sana’s, kill her. Just like toddlers break their toys when someone threatens to take them away, men break women.

Novelist and poet Margaret Atwood famously said, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” And believe me, we are. Whether we talk about it or not, most of us Pakistani women live our entire lives negotiating space and safety around men, both the ones we know and the ones we don’t.

“Why didn’t you just say no?”, “you should have been firm”, “you must not have stood your ground, so he thought there was a chance” are some of the sentences that every woman in Pakistan must have heard at some point in their life. As if a woman saying ‘no’ to a man will fix everything.

Learning the art of not offending men

Women in our society spend a majority of their lives negotiating how to politely (read safely) reject men’s advances. It requires command over body language, management of opinions, and the art of not offending men, because that could prove fatal.

In Sara’s case and several others, men never know how to quantify ‘too much’ because no setting is truly ever safe — not quiet or shy or bold or loud, not hunched or upright shoulders, not pretty or not not pretty. Men can always find ways to weaponise every equation involving women, even those carefully calibrated and cultivated to guarantee safety.

How to say no isn’t just about rejecting marriage proposals but also ranges from negotiating online spaces to workplaces and even within one’s own home — how should women talk back to their male bosses/colleagues without being fired? How should they say no to their husbands without being beaten and abused? How should they say no to strangers who invade her space without getting stalked, or worse, killed?

‘No’ is more than a complete sentence; for women, it is a complex syntax that has been perfected by navigating a complicated web — body language, tone, eye contact, walk, clothes, and even a smile — all to try and ensure that we can draw boundaries with men that keep us safe rather than get us killed.

Then again, what would have happened if Sana had said ‘Yes’? Would she have then been killed for having had a relationship that was “unfortunate for our society and contrary to religion and morality”, as Supreme Court’s Justice Hashim Kakar remarked regarding Noor Muqaddam during Zahir Jaffer’s appeal against his death sentence? There is simply no equitable setting for women shrinking themselves or projecting themselves that keeps them safe from the violence that men consider their fundamental right to inflict upon female bodies to keep them in line.

The politics of rejecting men

Every day, women are beaten, raped and killed in this country regardless of what they wear or where they are because these questions still exist and persist in public discourse. Relying on such qualifiers, exclusively reserved for female victims, is akin to asking what she did to ‘deserve it’. The only answer to that question is: Nothing.

It is always nothing because no one ever deserves it.

At present, the politics of rejecting men is a matter of global debate, framed and marketed as the ‘male loneliness epidemic’, wherein men around the world now imbibe online incel culture, and red pill codes so they can argue how they are owed female attention and sex. Sadly, in Pakistan, incel culture is not a new phenomenon. It is the gold standard, a permanent staple.

Currently, the JUI-F is launching protests across the country to protest a recently passed Child Marriages Restraint Bill because they feel they have the right to marry and have sex with children under the age of 18. The same politics of control play out in deeply troubling ways in online spaces. There is a pernicious vocabulary being developed and weaponised to target women on social media, particularly TikTok.

Most television channels continue to identify Sana Yousaf as a TikToker as if she were nothing else — a teenager, a student, an aspiring doctor. The word ‘TikToker’ has emerged as a deeply gendered term in recent years because men are seldom, if ever, morally targeted for being on an online platform that helps them generate an income.

This is also an increasingly classist phenomenon as TikTok has some of the most diverse user bases in countries such as Pakistan. According to a 2021 Gallup Poll, the bulk of Pakistani TikTok users, around 33 per cent, are under the age of 30 — the number is split almost evenly between urban and rural populations. This means that not only does the medium provide exposure to men and women from varying income classes, but also opens avenues for financial independence along with fame. The latter, however, is considered objectionable for women.

For this reason, the term TikToker is increasingly being weaponised to carve a new terrain for abuse that feeds toxic frameworks of moral/ immoral women as a terrifying new spin on the ‘chaadar chaardivari’ matrix. The implication is that the more public-facing a woman is, the more she is inviting the violence that may befall her. The underlying misogyny behind such doxxing and digital surveillance leads to tangible violence. This is demonstrated in the way dozens of men have ‘celebrated’ Sana Yousaf’s murder by calling it a ‘zabardast move’ to ‘clean up’ the ‘filth’ she was allegedly spreading with her naive posts about books, mangoes, and dinner with her friends.

The same language and fallout was witnessed when Qandeel Baloch was murdered in 2016 or when Ayesha Akram was groped and harassed by over 300 men at Minar-i-Pakistan on Independence Day in 2021. According to a 2023 United Nations report, female social media influencers are susceptible to four times more abuse than their male counterparts. In Pakistan, this abuse is deadly. Literally.

The brand of misogyny

Understanding and recognising that misogyny is not only normalised but institutionally licensed across Pakistan is essential if we are ever to put a stop to the ongoing femicide in the country. The fact that Pakistan repeatedly performs in the bottom five countries in the world when it comes to women’s rights and gender parity is not because there is a concentrated campaign against us, but because we lack the introspection needed to address the real issue at hand.

From Qandeel to Noor to Sana and all the women in between, the public discourse following their murder has always focused on whether ‘they did anything to deserve’ what happened to them rather than on the murderous malignancy of toxic masculinity that permeates down to our very social fabric.

The brand of misogyny that one sees displayed in the wake of the murder of young women, the closure of girls’ schools, calls to uphold child marriage as a fundamental right, and clerics making music videos about girls ‘dancing in school’ is a malaise that stems from shared patriarchal roots. Men’s utter lack of accountability drives our social discourse, and men have to begin holding each other accountable for any sustainable solution to Pakistan’s multiple human rights crises.

Attacking women and verbally abusing them for pointing out that men are violent only affirms the premise. Men need to talk to each other and enforce consequences for their own actions, which they alone are responsible for.

Stop telling women to stay home to stay safe. Most women get beaten, raped, and killed at home. Women are not unsafe because of what they wear or where they walk — they are unsafe because men hurt them. Men tell women that they are our protectors, but never ask who we need protection from and why. Patriarchy’s most convenient causal bind is that men will protect only the women they deem ‘good enough’ to merit safety or the women in their family at the expense of all other women who are some other man’s responsibility.

This way, men never need to address the root cause of the violence — themselves. If we stop being violent and excusing violence on each other’s part, women, children, and other men will no longer require protection.

Header image: Women activists in Islamabad hold photographs of Sana Yousaf, a TikToker who was murdered, during a demonstration to condemn violence against women. — AFP

Israel appears ready to attack Iran, officials in US and Europe say — The New York Times, June 11

Israeli attack on Iran could come within days, US and Israeli officials say — The Wall Street Journal, June 12

Iran doubles down as US signals Israel could strike despite nuclear talks — Al Jazeera, June 12

Trump says he doesn’t want Israel to attack Iran, but strike ‘could very well happen’ — The Times of Israel, June 12

In a rather anticipated move, Israel on Friday launched widescale strikes on Iran, claiming that it targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories, and military commanders. In a message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were the beginning of a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.

Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions, including at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Reuters reported. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards corps said its top commander, Hossein Salami, was killed, and state media reported the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit. Six Iranian nuclear scientists were killed, Iranian state media reported.

In response, Iran launched around 100 drones towards Israeli territory, which Israel was working to intercept, according to Tel Aviv. At around 0800 GMT, Israeli media said an order to citizens to remain near protected areas had been lifted, suggesting that most or all of the drones had been neutralised.

Separately, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was not involved in the strikes and Tel Aviv had acted unilaterally.

The United States and other European countries had already warned of such an attack by Israel on Iran, which has once again reignited tensions in the Middle East. In fact, on Wednesday, the US withdrew diplomats from Iraq and authorised the voluntary departure of its military family members from the region.

These developments come against the backdrop of the Iran-US nuclear talks, which, as per a New York Times report, revolve around Tehran’s near-bomb-grade uranium and Washington’s goal to ensure Iran enriches no uranium at all on its soil.

Uranium enrichment is a process used to make fuel for nuclear power plants, but it can also yield material for an atomic warhead.

Negotiations or bombs

In April, the US and Iran initiated high-level nuclear talks with Oman serving as an intermediary. It was the first engagement between the two countries in nearly seven years, when President Donald Trump had pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Essentially, the 2015 deal imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme, making it impossible for the country to produce a bomb, in return for the lifting of most of the US and international sanctions against it. But Trump withdrew the US from the accord with world powers in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Tehran reacted a year later by violating the deal’s nuclear curbs.

In March 2025, after assuming the presidency for the second time, Trump said he had written a letter to Iran, pressing it to open talks on preventing the development of nuclear weapons or face possible military action. In response, Iran had pushed back against Trump’s demands regarding direct negotiations and instead left the door open to indirect discussions.

A few days later, however, Trump told reporters at the Oval Office that Washington was commencing direct talks with Iran. The announcement was made during talks with Netanyahu, who was visiting the US at the time.

The talks

The first round of US-Iran talks took place on April 12 in Muscat and was described as “constructive”. The focus of the talks was on “de-escalating regional tensions, prisoner exchanges and limited agreements to ease sanctions in exchange for controlling Iran’s nuclear programme”, Reuters had reported.

US and Iranian officials again met for the second time on April 19, this time in Rome. Speaking on state television after the talks, the Iranian foreign minister had described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere. There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks.

The third round of talks was held in Oman again, this time including a technical-level meeting between experts from both sides. Just a day before the talks, Trump, in an interview with Time magazine, had said that he “would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped”.

The same week, Washington had also announced new sanctions targeting Iran’s oil network, a move described as “hostile” by Tehran. Separately, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had warned Iran that it would face consequences for supporting the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia military organisation active in Yemen.

Subsequently, the fourth round of talks, scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed. “US sanctions on Iran during the nuclear talks are not helping the sides to resolve the nuclear dispute through diplomacy,” Reuters had quoted an Iranian official as saying. Meanwhile, Oman had stated that the talks were being rescheduled due to “logistical reasons”.

The same day, in an interview with Fox News, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said that Iran had to ‘walk away’ from uranium enrichment and long-range missile development, and it should allow American inspectors into its facilities.

“If you have the ability to enrich at 3.67 per cent, it only takes a few weeks to get to 20pc, then 60pc, and then the 80 and 90pc that you need for a weapon,” Rubio had said.

Deal or no deal?

The fourth round of US-Iran talks did end up taking place, again in Muscat on May 12. The meeting was held the same week President Trump undertook his visit to the Middle East, the Associated Press reported.

Iran called the negotiations, which ran for three hours, “difficult but useful”. On the other hand, a US official told AP: “Agreement was reached to move forward with the talks to continue working through technical elements.”

Three days later, on May 15, Trump announced that the US was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran. “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” he said on his Gulf tour, according to a shared pool report by AFP.

“We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this … there [are] two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way,” he added.

However, an Iranian source said that while Tehran was prepared to offer what it considered concessions, the “issue is that America is not willing to lift major sanctions in exchange”.

Irrespective, the fifth round of talks took place between the two countries in Rome on May 23, where “some but not conclusive progress” took place, said mediator Oman. Meanwhile, Iran said it had received “elements” of a US proposal, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later said the text contained “ambiguities”.

A few days after the fifth round of talks, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a speech delivered on the commemoration of the death of the Islamic Republic’s founder, pledged that Tehran would not abandon its uranium enrichment — a key demand in the US proposal.

“Independence means not waiting for the green light from America and the likes of America,” he said, adding that the US proposal was “100pc against” the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Tensions rise

Henceforth began a tug of war between Iran and the US.

On June 9, the Iranian foreign ministry said it would soon present a counterproposal for a nuclear deal to the US via mediator Oman. It stated that the US proposal had failed to include Tehran’s key demand of lifting sanctions.

But despite the disagreement, President Trump earlier this week said talks would continue between the two countries. “They’re just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up,” Trump told reporters at the White House, according to Reuters. “They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment.”

He further said that Iran was the main topic of a phone conversation he had on Monday with the Israeli PM. Netanyahu’s office said the president had told him talks with Iran would continue at the end of the week. Soon after, Oman announced that the sixth round of US-Iran talks will take place on Sunday.

But then a lot happened in just one day — June 12. Trump warned that a “massive conflict” could break out in the Middle East. “I don’t want to say imminent, but it looks like it’s something that could very well happen,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter about an Israeli attack on Iran, AP reported.

At the same time, the US president also said that he was urging Netanyahu to hold off from taking action for the time being and later took to social media to say that the “entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran”.

The same day, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued its strongest condemnation of Iran in 20 years, saying that the country had continued to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade levels and had failed to comply with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. Following this, Iran said it had built and would activate a third nuclear enrichment facility.

Within just a few hours after the developments, Israel attacked Iranian nuclear targets, with Netanyahu saying strikes would continue for as long as it would take “to remove this threat”.

Header image: The handout satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies and taken on February 12, 2025, shows an overview of the Isfahan enrichment facility in Iran. — Reuters

Israel’s recent strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites — including the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz — have marked a significant escalation in tensions between the two countries and the Middle East. This is not the first time Israel has taken pre-emptive action against Iranian nuclear infrastructure. For years, the two states have been engaged in a complex and often covert conflict involving cyber operations, proxy engagements, and targeted killings.

Disputes over Iran’s nuclear activities — which Tehran maintains are for peaceful purposes — have long shaped the relationship. Israel has consistently called for international pressure on Iran, while the latter has rejected allegations of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

From deadly bombings in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, to the cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility using the Stuxnet virus, assassinations of key Iranian nuclear scientists, and now the retaliatory missile exchanges of 2024–2025, the two countries have been locked in a high-stakes regional conflict with global repercussions.

Here is a timeline of key events tracing the covert and open hostilities that have defined the Iran–Israel confrontation over the past decade:

August 2019

Israel carried out a series of attacks in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — all of Iran’s allies — claiming it was to prevent them from equipping themselves with sophisticated weapons.

It accused Tehran of trying to establish an arms supply line through Iraq and northern Syria into Lebanon. During the same year, Israel also attacked ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons through the sea, according to the New York Times.

January 2020

General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) and the architect of its security apparatus, was killed in a US airstrike near Baghdad International Airport. The US has traditionally been Israel’s staunchest ally and has echoed its calls against Iran’s nuclear programme. As a result of the airstrike, Soleimani died alongside Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and several others.

The White House and the Pentagon confirmed that the “killing” of Soleimani in Iraq was ordered by US President Donald Trump as a preemptive action to deter future attacks allegedly being planned by Iran. The Pentagon said Soleimani had been “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region”. It said it took “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani,” but did not specify how.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed Soleimani as a “martyr”, and vowed that a “vigorous revenge is waiting for the criminals” behind the killing.

Iran struck back in retaliation with missile attacks on Iraqi bases housing American troops. About 100 US military personnel were injured.

March 2021

By the beginning of 2021, Iran and Israel had increasingly begun attacking each other at sea.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, accused Iran of being behind a February explosion on an Israeli-owned ship transporting vehicles sailing off the coast of Oman. Iran accused Israel of targeting an Iranian cargo ship about 50 miles off the coast of Israel.

The Wall Street Journal cited US and Middle East officials reporting that Israel, in the same year, targeted at least a dozen vessels travelling to Syria and, in most cases, transporting Iranian petrol, according to AFP.

April 2021

Iran blamed Israel for a mysterious explosion that knocked out power at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, BBC reported.

Israel did not publicly accept that it was behind what Iran called “an act of sabotage”, but US and Israeli media reports quoted officials as saying it was carried out by Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, Mossad.

Iran vowed to take revenge “at a time of its choosing”.

November 2021

Iran’s high-ranking nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot “by terrorists” in an ambush near Tehran. At the time of his death, he was serving as head of the Research and Innovation Organisation within Iran’s Ministry of Defence.

Fakhrizadeh had long been suspected by Western, Israeli and Iranian exile foes of masterminding what they alleged was a covert programme to develop nuclear weapons. Iran had consistently denied pursuing nuclear arms, insisting its nuclear activities were for peaceful purposes.

Netanyahu had previously claimed that after the closure of Project AMAD — Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme — Fakhrizadeh continued to work on “special projects” within the Defence Ministry.

Following the assassination, Iran’s then-foreign minister condemned the killing as an act of terrorism and accused Israel of carrying out the operation. A spokesperson for Netanyahu declined to comment when approached by AFP.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Iran’s envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi warned against “any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel against his country, particularly during the remaining period of the current administration of the United States in office.” referring to Trump’s final weeks in office. He stated that Iran reserved the right to take “all necessary measures” in self-defence.

Fakhrizadeh’s assassination took place less than two months before Joe Biden was to take office as US president.

Biden had promised a return to diplomacy with Iran after four hawkish years under Trump, who withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and began reimposing crippling sanctions.

July 2022

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a new security pact aimed at reinforcing their united stance against Iran. As part of the agreement, the United States pledged it would “never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon” and vowed to use “all” elements of American power to prevent the Islamic Republic from doing so.

Lapid stated that the only measure capable of stopping Iran was knowing that if they continued to develop their nuclear programme, “the free world would use force”.

In response, Iran’s ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi warned the US and its allies that Tehran “would not accept any crisis or insecurity in the region”.

December 2023

An Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital Damascus killed a senior adviser in the IRGC, Sayyed Razi Mousavi. He was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran, according to Reuters.

According to Iran’s ambassador in Damascus, Hossein Akbari, Mousavi was posted at the embassy as a diplomat and was killed by Israeli missiles after returning home from work.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called it a “show of weakness” on Israel’s part.

The IRGC warned that Israel would suffer for killing Mousavi, who held the Guards’ rank of brigadier-general.

April 2024

A suspected Israeli airstrike on the main Iranian embassy compound in Damascus killed seven officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), including two senior commanders — Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi. Several other IRGC military advisers were in the building.

The attack marked the first time the vast embassy compound itself had been hit, and it came amid soaring tensions over Tel Aviv’s war in Gaza.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. However, a senior Israeli government official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said those hit had “been behind many attacks on Israeli and American assets and had plans for additional attacks”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called for a “serious response by the international community”, while Iran vowed to take revenge.

In retaliation, the IRGC launched what it described as “extensive” drone and missile strikes against “certain targets” inside Israel under the name Operation True Promise. On April 13, Iran carried out a direct attack on Israeli territory using a barrage of drones and missiles. Its regional proxies and allied groups also launched coordinated attacks on Israeli positions.

In response, Israel conducted a direct strike on the Iranian city of Isfahan on April 19, according to multiple sources. Tehran, however, downplayed the incident and indicated it had no immediate plans for retaliation.

July 2024

Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president. Haniyeh’s bodyguards were also killed in their residence in Tehran.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called it “a grave escalation” aimed at breaking the will of Hamas.

Khamenei threatened “harsh punishment” for Haniyeh’s killing, saying: “We consider it our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Initially, Israel did not comment on the killing. Later, in December, Israel’s defence minister for the first time admitted to Israel’s role in killing Hamas’s political leader, according to BBC.

September 2024

Israel killed Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 27. Nasrallah was a leading figure in the Tehran-backed “Axis of Resistance”, helping to project Iranian influence across the Middle East.

General Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of the Guards’ operations, died in the same strike, according to IRNA news agency.

The Israeli military admitted in a statement that Nasrallah was eliminated along with another top Hezbollah leader — Ali Karaki — and other commanders in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters under a residential building in Dahiyeh — a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.

Soon after, Israeli military posted on X saying, “Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorise the world.”

While in Tehran, posters of Nasrallah were erected bearing the slogan “Hezbollah is alive”.

October 2024

Tensions between the two regional arch-rivals came to a head when Iran launched what it described as a barrage of missiles at targets within Israel. Although Israel claimed it destroyed most of the projectiles before they impacted, several missiles did hit various areas across the country, although no widespread loss of life was reported.

Tehran had claimed at the time that the attack was a response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, IRGC commander Abbas Nilfor­oushan, as well as the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

On October 26, 2024, Israel bombed military targets in Iran, killing four servicemen, in retaliation for the Islamic republic’s barrage of around 200 missiles against Israel on October 1.

June 2025

Israel launched widescale attacks on several Iranian nuclear facilities and military sites, and carried out assassinations of top military officials and nuclear scientists, as part of their launch of Operation Rising Lion — a targeted military operation aimed at rolling back what it called the “Iranian threat to Israeli survival.” Israeli officials described it as the beginning of a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from developing an atomic weapon.

Iranian state media have reported the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) top commander Hossein Salami, as well as nuclear scientists Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi in the strike.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that Israel and its chief ally would pay a ‘heavy price’ for the attack, accusing Washington of providing support for the operation. He said Israel would face a “bitter and painful” fate in its aftermath.

Israeli military Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel had reached a “point of no return” with the operation, which began early Friday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the United States was not involved in the strikes and that Tel Aviv had acted unilaterally for self-defence. However, an Israeli official told public broadcaster Kan that Israel had coordinated with Washington on Iran.

In April, President Trump told journalists in the Oval Office that he was pretty confident there would be a deal with Iran “without having to start dropping bombs all over the place”. A little more than a month later, Israel is doing exactly that — dropping bombs all over the place.

It is now clear that the bait for surprising the Persians was dialogue with the US; talks that were cancelled and rescheduled to allow the Israelis to attack, and that Trump was playing his role in this deception.

Meanwhile, the West offers pathetic platitudes to de-escalation but sends jets to Israel, the glorified petrol stations of the Gulf look on with feigned concern as Israel does their bidding, and non-Arab states like Pakistan avert their gaze haplessly as Tehran is ravaged by bombs battle-tested on Palestinians. It is only Iran that stands against Israel, and it stands completely alone.

Cast in the same mould

Iran and Israel are surprisingly alike. Both countries are nestled among neighbours they believe are hostile to them, both are religiously distinct, and both believe themselves to be culturally and intellectually superior to the Arabs. In his brilliant book, Treacherous Alliance, political analyst Trita Parsi notes that theirs is a nemesis born of affinity. The Iranians and Israelis, he says, often think as they go about their daily lives that “the Arabs are out to get us.” The hate it seems is returned; the title of a book by Khairallah Tulfah, Saddam Hussein’s maternal uncle is, ‘Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies’.

The Israeli disdain for the Arabs is evident, “we know what the Arabs can do, and it isn’t much,” an Israeli analyst told Parsi, but while Israeli officials saw themselves as culturally superior to their Arab neighbours, they saw Iran as an equal. And this view, it seems, was shared by the Persians, leading them into an unlikely alliance with Israel during the Iran-Iraq war, where Israel helped the Iranians, ironically bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 in collaboration with Iran. It was only after Iran defeated Iraq (in a war in which almost the whole international community, including the US, sided with Iraq), that both states, in their aspiration for regional hegemony in the Middle East, turned from allies to enemies.

The most important similarity between both nations is their fundamental belief that they can’t rely on anybody but themselves. While this is true for the Iranians, it is less true for Israel which is the golden calf of the only superpower in the world.

In spite of this, its persecution complex after the Holocaust means Israelis inherently still believe they must stand on their own. It is this mindset that has led each to pursue its own military and economic development, a pursuit most difficult for Iran which has been strangled by sanctions that have left it out in the cold.

It is this formidable rivalry which leads to the two states being at war today. The animosity between them is not born out of enmity, but competition. Israel sees in Iran a state it aims to destroy, not because it is worried that its ‘black-turbaned fundamental clerics’ will get the bomb, but because it sees in Iran a worthy adversary.

A nuclear Iran

Under international law, of course, Israel’s actions are completely unlawful. While some attempt has been made to pay lip service to the notion of self-defence, this is against a far-fetched threat which may materialise if Iran were to get nuclear weapons.

It was in fact Israel’s strike on the Osirak reactor that solidified opposition to this form of self-defence in the international community. Preventive self-defence, against threats which are not imminent, are illegal acts of aggression, though Israel remains protected by America’s veto from a Security Council resolution calling for an end to its strikes.

Moreover, the targeted assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists are indeed war crimes, as they are civilians who cannot be made the object of attack. If the laws of war were enlarged to include scientists working on nuclear programmes, every scientist or engineer working on the Manhattan Project would have been targetable.

While it is an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons even though it cries wolf over Iran’s attempt to enrich uranium, the old joke in diplomatic circles is that Iran has supposedly been weeks away from getting the bomb for the last 30 years.

This time was no different; the acquisition of nuclear weapons was imminent, said Netanyahu, waving around a resolution from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which holds Iran in breach of its obligations. This is despite the fact that Iran strategically has always desired a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, as it would enjoy conventional supremacy as one of the largest states in the region. However, the failure of the Iranians has been their ever willingness to talk.

In 2003, after the Americans occupied Baghdad and fearing they were next, the Iranians sent the most compromising proposal possible to the United States in which they put everything on the table. They offered to end their support for the Palestinian resistance and pursue the Pakistan/ Malaysian model, under which they would not recognise Israel but would stop arming the non-state groups fighting against the occupation. They also offered to disarm Hezbollah and make it a political party, and most importantly, they offered to give up entirely their nuclear programme and open it up to intrusive international scrutiny.

In return, there would be an end to sanctions that had crippled the country’s economy and stymied its development. It should have been a no-brainer but it wasn’t. US Vice President, Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, shut it down saying “we don’t speak to evil”. Compared to America’s neo-conservative war hawks, the Ayatollahs are more flexible.

As a result, Iran had to ideologically commit to confronting the US-led order and it did so by championing the Palestinian cause, arming armed groups directly, with few strings attached. It also continued to enrich uranium, as it is allowed to do, to meet its energy needs.

Two years after Iran’s proposal to the US, when asked how far Israel would go to stop Iran’s nuclear programme, Dan Halutz, Israel’s Chief of General Staff, said “two thousand kilometres”, the distance between Israel and Iran.

If it wasn’t clear then, it should be now. Iran absolutely must have nuclear weapons if it is to ward off any future Israeli threats. While it can quote international law by the yard, the UN Charter cannot do what nuclear warheads can. Iran must have the bomb.

How does this end?

Regime change in Iran has been on the cards for decades. General Wesley Clark, former commander of Nato and US presidential hopeful in 2003, claimed that he had met with a senior military officer in 2001 who told him that the Bush administration was planning to attack seven Muslim majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. Almost all of those countries have either had their leaders toppled in direct or indirect military intervention by the West, all except Iran.

Almost two decades ago, Netanyahu believed the US didn’t even need a military incursion to achieve this goal. In 2002, he told a US congressional committee meeting that regime change in Iran could be affected through transmitting US TV shows into Iran’s satellite TV network, “because that is subversive stuff … the young kids watch it.. they wanna have nice clothes and the same houses and swimming pools …”

Today, as bombs rain on Tehran, there are two ways this conflict can go. Iran can continue to send its missiles to Israel for long enough that the war becomes unpopular with the Israeli public and Russian and Chinese diplomats intervene to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Or, the Iranian regime cannot hold and it will fall.

If it does, Israel will install itself in Iran, allowing a puppet regime that offers no resistance to itself or the Saudis. The Gulf states and Israel may then allow there to be an emasculated, demilitarised, and supervised Palestinian state which will be a state only in name, with Israel controlling its borders and foreign policy, and continuing its military presence in the country. They will say this is a victory for peace, a victory for the Middle East, a victory for Muslims.

In the meantime, Iran, as of now unbowed and undefeated, fights on.

“Indeed, Pharaoh elevated himself in the land, and made its people into factions, persecuting a sect, slaughtering its sons and sparing its women. Indeed, he was one of the corrupters. But We willed that We would favor those who were downtrodden in the land, making them leaders and heirs.” — Qur’an 28:4-5

Header image: Smoke billows for the second day from the Shahran oil depot, northwest of Tehran, on June 16, 2025. — AFP

For years, allies and adversaries alike have ridiculed Benjamin Netanyahu as the boy who cried wolf. The far-right hardliner has long been haunted by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb, decrying that Tehran is just “weeks away” from such a weapon for over three decades now. A poster boy for genocide, he may be, it takes a man of a certain skillset to be able to be taken seriously after being so wrong for so long.

Despite his faulty calculus, Netanyahu never really let up. From infamously waving a cartoon sketch of an Iranian bomb at the UN in 2012 to privately lobbying Western leaders into a broader military entanglement with Ayetollahs, the Israeli premier has long prized a war with Iran as the crown jewel of his sordid legacy.

So when he finally signed off on a series of “pre-emptive strikes” that looked to target Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and military brass in the early hours of Friday, it wasn’t really much of a surprise. On the contrary, the post-attack script was practically writing itself.

“If we don’t attack, then it’s 100pc that we will die,” he argued in a video statement to the nation, hours after 200 Israeli warplanes zipped into Iranian airspace and dropped hundreds of bombs, rocking cities with explosions and jolting people out of their beds.

Old habits die hard, and sure enough, Bibi once again asserted the same, old, tired trope: that “Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs” and was “taking steps to weaponise this enriched uranium”. In typical Bibi fashion, he didn’t feel obliged to provide any evidence as to why the Iranians would suddenly abandon decades of nuclear restraint out of the blue. Nor did he deem it necessary to explain what had changed since US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in March that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that the Ayatollah “has not authorised the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.

“We decided we couldn’t wait anymore. We are at midnight,” said Netanyahu.

It’s the same apocalyptic framing that has defined much of Netanyahu’s public advocacy over the years. These lacklustre justifications are usually enough for the Piers Morgans of the world, who suspend all logical scepticism to parrot whatever the latest eurocentric talking point of the day is. For the rest of us, however, Netanyahu’s stated strategic objective is as murky as it gets.

For one, the only nuclear site that Netanyahu mentioned in his speech was the large enrichment facility at Natanz. The Iranians have informed the IAEA that while Natanz was indeed targeted, other sites with nuclear material were operating normally. Later, Israel also attacked Fordow, where Iran is also suspected to be enriching material up to 60 per cent, but hasn’t been able to cause any observable damage. It looks like Israel attempted just enough of an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to be able to paint it as an act of preemptive self-defence. Since then, Netanyahu has stuck to his signature brand — bombing civilian areas, targeting journalists and trashing economic zones.

The consensus has long been that any meaningful attempt at the neutralisation of Iran’s nuclear program is a notch above Israel’s pay grade anyway. This is largely because the Iranians have safely buried their most advanced centrifuge cascades for enriching uranium hundreds of feet beneath the ground at sites like Natanz and Fordow. Potentially getting at those facilities would require the 15-ton bunker-buster bombs and a kind of military attrition that only the United States can provide. At most, Israel could perhaps delay a potential nuclear weapon by a matter of months, which is nearly not enough of a payoff to push the region into a war of uncertain consequences.

Most importantly, it doesn’t really take a four-star general to know that any meaningful threat to the Iranian regime is likely to force the Ayatollah’s hand into abandoning the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and race toward a bomb. They certainly have the capability to do so. In a sit-down with CNN’s Christine Amanpour, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted as much: “They have 400 kilograms of 60pc enriched uranium and it can be enriched to 90pc in a garage with the right equipment and they will have a crude bomb”. Considering the entire country of Israel is considered a “one bomb state”, coaxing the Ayatollah by bombarding his capital seems to be somewhat counterproductive.

Granted, missing out on an opportunity for a chaotic war has never quite been Bibi’s style, but bombarding the Islamic Republic mere days before another round of negotiations is particularly deranged for a country already on the brink of maxing out its political capital as far as the international community is concerned. The only plausible conclusion, therefore, is that the alarmism over WMDs is a smokescreen for something else. It’s a saga that traces back long before Netanyahu came onto the political scene, one that goes back to the very genesis of the American empire.

Empire, in its own words

When the USSR fell in the winters of ’91, the United States was left crippling with a national identity crisis. Without a grand antagonist to rally against, the US had lost its compass for global engagement. This was uncharted territory for any nation in the history of the world. Perhaps for the first time ever, the world was, in the truest sense of the word, unipolar.

Recognising the gaping ideological void left by what Charles Krauthammer dubbed ‘the unipolar moment’, an ambitious cadre of neoconservatives saw gold in the streets. Drawing from a deep well of hard theory, these thinkers began cooking up a revolutionary approach to international affairs that would go on to cement the United States as the undisputed world empire.

The intellectual vanguard of this movement coalesced around a handful of think tanks concentrated in and around the Beltway. The most notable, and perhaps most influential, of these was the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a think tank established in 1992 around the core premise that “American leadership is good for both America and for the world.” Fully cognisant of the unrivalled military apparatus at its disposal, the PNAC’s leading lights penned what would go on to become the ideological blueprint for the new American empire.

Titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy”, the groundbreaking policy brief urged the United States to realise and embrace the moral obligations of its unprecedented power, and assume the mantle of a “benevolent global hegemon” — one that wouldn’t hesitate to flex its military muscle in order to advance, and when necessary enforce, liberal democratic principles across the world.

Over the next few years, the neoconservative doctrine gradually penetrated the highest echelons of government. The Clinton years, for instance, saw figures like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright articulate a kind of hubris that had become indicative of the American Century: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

If America were to assume the throne of global imperialism, it would need to tame the vast deserts (and the rich oil reserves that lay underneath) of the Middle East. In the summer of 1996, a constellation of neoconservative strategists — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others — drafted a policy blueprint for the then-newly elected Prime Minister of Israel: an up-and-coming hardliner who went by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” embodied the broader neoconservative vision for an American satellite state in the Middle East, and went on to become the foundational document guiding Netanyahu’s political vision for the region.

The Clean Break strategy rested on a three-pronged approach for Israel: A departure from the Oslo Accords and a rejection of the two-state solution, a regime change operation in adversarial states across the Middle East, and a politically-symbiotic alliance with the United States through preemptive military strength, market reforms, and opposition to Islamist regimes. When the Bush administration took the White House, Perle, Feith, and Wurmser, alongside fellow neoconservatives and PNAC alum Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, found themselves occupying pivotal positions in the national security apparatus.

Around this time, the PNAC drafted a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” It recognised that imperative though it may be, manufacturing consent for a regime change excursion into the Middle East wouldn’t exactly be a cakewalk without “some catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbour.” A year later, two Boeing 767 airliners rammed into the World Trade Centre and in the ashes and embers of unspeakable tragedy, the neocons had their opportunity. They’d be remiss not to cash in.

With American public opinion at its most malleable, the neocons packing the Bush cabinet rolled out the red carpet for Netanyahu, then enjoying a stint as a “regional expert” on the Middle East, to address Congress in 2002. It came as no surprise, then, that Netanyahu’s testimony was in perfect lockstep with the Clean Break papers.

“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” he predicted. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.” The monstrosity of the lies told, the millions of lives lost, and an entire region left in disarray was just another Tuesday for the Likud Party czar.

According to retired four-star general of the US Army and former NATO commander Wesley Clark, it was no coincidence that Netanyahu centred his 2002 testimony on a US-backed regime change operation in Iraq and Iran. In a bombshell exposé in 2007, Clark recounted heading to the Pentagon 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, where he was allegedly shown a plan that outlined US military action aimed at “taking out seven countries in five years”. The regimes staring down the gun’s barrel were: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

Now, one could argue that Clark was lying, that he was fabricating the existence of these scandalous documents, and that the architecture of the so-called Terror Wars was not at all choreographed in the dark rooms of the Pentagon years in advance. Making such an argument, of course, would have to involve the colossal task of explaining away over 20 years of American military excursions in the Middle East.

For the next couple of decades, the American war machine ticked off nearly every country listed in the Pentagon memo like items off a grocery list. Wherever there was the slightest inkling of pretext, the wrath of Empire, ruthless and swift as it is, made sure to follow. Where there wasn’t, it was simply manufactured all the same. Twenty years on, almost every regime on Clark’s list — from Saddam’s Iraq to Assad’s Syria — has either fallen or has been rendered, for all intents and purposes, defunct. All, save for one.

And so for Bibi, Iran is the coup de grâce of a political strategy more than 25 years in the making. The early-morning strikes and the hawkish rhetoric that followed are not solely about Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. It’s about a near-perfect execution of the Empire’s nefarious design in the Middle East — one that has moulded and sculpted the contours of Netanyahu’s politics, and one he’s remained remarkably devoted to for much, if not all, of his public career.

With domestic and international patience for his crimes in Gaza wearing thin, Netanyahu knows his days at the Knesset are numbered. On top of that, the regime in Tehran is uniquely exposed, perhaps for the first time. Iranian air defences have been battered over the past year. So, too, has its axis of deterrence that it built up over decades by arming both Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and a swath of smaller proxies across Syria and Yemen.

These shifts in the strategic environment have opened a window for action at much lower risk to both the Jewish state and its benefactor across the Atlantic than at any time since the Iran-Iraq war of the eighties. It’s a dwindling moment Netanyahu cannot afford to let by. And so after 30 painstaking years of waiting, the stars have finally aligned for the Israeli prime minister and the American foreign policy establishment. There’s just one Trump-sized problem.

The final play

Time and again, Trump has made it clear that a war with Iran is the furthest thing from his foreign policy agenda. Whether it be deploying his fixer Steve Witkoff to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before even kicking off his presidency, or explicitly warning the Israelis against a unilateral attack that would short-circuit his outreach for diplomacy, Trump appeared to be sticking to his guns (as ironic as the expression may be) on avoiding a catastrophic war in the Middle East at any cost. Sure, a baseline resistance to war is not too much to ask for, but in the high halls of Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s as good as it gets.

The streets were chirping with speculation of a potential rift between the American president and Bibi Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the attack. When the President decided to play dealmaker in his most recent tour to the Middle East, and notably left out Israel from his travel list, the media took it as a telltale sign of a chasm between the Oval Office and the Knesset. More damaging still, US negotiations with Iran and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — two of Israel’s most bitter regional adversaries — proceeded without any visible Israeli involvement, despite Jerusalem’s long-standing insistence on being central to all Middle Eastern diplomacy. As international condemnation for the genocide in Gaza reached fever pitch, the diplomatic cold shoulder was made even more apparent when Vice President JD Vance abruptly cancelled his trip to Israel over supposed “logistical issues” — largely taken as diplomatic speak for ‘we’d rather not be seen with you right now.’

This presented Netanyahu with a glaring problem. Starting catastrophic wars may come as second nature to him, but without Uncle Sam’s military hardware and diplomatic cover, he risks bumbling Israel into an ill-advised war of attrition with Iran. And unlike Iraq and Libya, Iran is no pushover. The regime in Tehran has weathered four decades of crippling sanctions, international isolation, and constant saber-rattling and so far, has lived to tell the tale.

As the civilian death toll rises, the people of Iran will naturally rally around the flag, gutting any further hopes of an internal mobilisation against the Ayatollah. This matters as the play was never about Iran using a bomb to attack Israel — which would be suicidal — but rather that an Iranian bomb would limit Israel’s (and therefore the United States’) manoeuvrability to dominate the region with impunity. And so for Israel to assume the throne of regional hegemony, it would need to find a way to derail Trump’s push for diplomacy.

And herein lies the bard: Netanyahu’s appetite for regional conflagration consistently outpaces Israel’s actual capacity to deliver it. So in the face of a closing window, what could the Israeli premier do to not only spark the war he always wanted, but outplay the American president by blowing up his negotiations with Tehran and ensnare him into a conflict he clearly doesn’t seem to want? Once Netanyahu’s ordeal is framed in this light, his strategic math begins to add up. In finally striking Iran, Netanyahu has presented the White House with a fait accompli that would be politically impossible to reverse.

The elegance of the gambit, from Netanyahu’s perspective, lies in its simplicity. Each Iranian response to Israeli provocation creates a new crisis that demands American involvement. Once the conflict rises up the escalation ladder — and it will — Trump will be faced with an impossible choice: commit political suicide at home by abandoning America’s most reliable project in the Middle East, or betray his base of ‘America First’ conservatives by tossing the country into yet another foreign entanglement. Watching Israel go it alone while America stands on the sidelines would be tantamount to a political crucifixion at home for Trump.

Netanyahu understands this as well as anyone, and knows that once blood is spilt and the President’s credibility is perceived to be on the line, the original question of whether the war was wise becomes irrelevant. By lighting the fuse on a regional powder keg, Netanyahu has effectively cornered the leader of the Free World into becoming his partner in international war crimes. Hence, this is a war, not of necessity, but of calculated provocation — a masterclass in forcing the hand of a reluctant superpower and bending it to your will. After all, what’s the point of being America’s indispensable ally if you can’t occasionally make yourself truly indispensable?

Whether Trump really was blindsided by Netanyahu’s actions on Friday or whether he was using diplomatic leverage with the Iranians as a ruse to double-cross them while the Israelis took their shot will be a debate that will rage on long after the dust settles on Trump’s presidential stint. For the President today, it’s a zero-sum game. Either he admits to being blindsided by Netanyahu and runs the risk of appearing incompetent, or he admits to being in lockstep with the Israeli prime minister and alienates his most ardent supporters at a time he needs all the political capital he can muster. Regardless, the ball now firmly rests in Trump’s court. The Israelis have reportedly invited the administration to join the war effort, and in doing so, handed the President the single greatest test of his life — one that will go on to define his legacy for generations to come.

Tough choices

Where the buck falls in this conflict will now largely depend on what Trump decides to do from here on out. Initially, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quick to dismiss Jerusalem’s onslaught as “unilateral action”. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio maintained. At first, the administration appeared to hold its ground, declining Netanyahu’s increasingly frantic invitations for kinetic collaboration and maintaining the pretence that America had nothing to do with Friday’s fireworks.

But cracks in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) camp are already beginning to show. As the two countries climb the escalation ladder and the legacy media work in overdrive to sell American involvement to the people, Trump seems to be capitulating to the oldest con in the Washington playbook: the manufactured crisis that demands American intervention. The pressure is mounting from all the usual suspects — defence contractors salivating over potential windfalls, congressional hawks encircling the Oval Office and dusting off their war drums, and keyboard warriors seeking to monetise a conflict they don’t fully understand.

It is enough pressure to crush the staunchest of pacifists, and Trump is the furthest thing from an ideologue. Buckling under domestic duress, he seems to be abandoning his initial position of non-involvement for a tone of reluctant endorsement, committing intelligence and logistical aid to the Israeli war effort.

“We knew everything, and I tried to save Iran from humiliation and death. I tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out,” Trump has said. His shifting stance around the Israeli strikes, which he has called “excellent” and “very successful”, and his sheer inability to restrain Netanyahu, is a dark omen for what could come next. Playing right into Netanyahu’s hands in this manner is likely to further alienate the Iranians, making any prospect of a diplomatic solution politically impossible for Tehran, and boxing America into yet another foreign war.

It is said that President Kennedy also encountered a similar dilemma at the outset of his presidency in 1961. Shortly upon entering office, the young president found himself staring down the barrel of a half-baked CIA operation that had all the strategic sophistication of a college prank. The Bay of Pigs invasion was, by any reasonable assessment, a spectacularly misguided adventure — a ragtag group of Cuban exiles, armed with outdated weapons and deployed into the Bay of Pigs to topple a seasoned revolutionary in Castro who had already proven his mettle against far superior forces.

Yet the CIA’s game plan was to let the operation proceed as planned. When it inevitably collapsed into chaos, Kennedy would have no choice but to authorise full-scale American military intervention to save face and salvage what remained of American credibility.

It was political chess of the highest order — a deliberate failure designed to manufacture the very crisis that would justify a war the Agency had wanted all along. Once the new President’s fingerprints were on the operation, backing down would mean accepting humiliation on a global stage. The choice was binary — double down with American firepower, or watch the Free World’s credibility crumble in the Caribbean surf. Today, Netanyahu is taking a page out of the same playbook.

Ultimately, Kennedy called the CIA’s bluff, refusing to commit to a war with no strategic payoff for any stakeholder involved. It would bode well for America and the world at large for Trump to do the same.

Header image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Berlin on March 16, 2023. — AFP

Syed Baqir Ali Jafferi, 61, waited a decade. He had decided that 2025 would be the year he would do it; his younger brother’s sudden demise had further compelled him. His visa had arrived, and the bookings were complete. But then Israel attacked Iran.

Jafferi, a resident of Karachi, like many others, was to embark on a pilgrimage to Iraq in Muharram, beginning June 27. The journey holds a deep spiritual place in the hearts of Shias across the world. In fact, Karbala hosts the largest gathering in the world on Ashura (Muharram 10) and Arbaeen (Safar 20).

From Pakistan, a majority of pilgrims take the land route to Karbala via Iran, which is also home to key Shia religious sites in Mashhad and Qom. Others take the plane. Jafferi was among the latter.

“All of his preparations were complete and only the tickets were to be booked, which he had planned to do on the first day of Muharram,” his niece told Dawn.com. “He was seeing this as his final trip because he can’t travel a lot due to old age.”

Unfortunately, Jafferi couldn’t get his tickets. Last week, major airlines suspended flight operations to Iran, Iraq and Syria either indefinitely or until the end of June.

Airlines that have suspended flights to the Middle East:

• Fly Dubai suspended flights to Iraq and Iran until June 20
• Emirates has also suspended flights to Iraq (Basra and Baghdad) and Iran (Tehran) until June 30
• Qatar Airways suspended operations to Iran, Iraq, and Syria until further notice. Flights to Iran’s Tehran, Mashhad, and Shiraz have been halted, as well as to Iraq’s Baghdad, Basra, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Najaf, and Syria’s Damascus

The development came after Israel launched a wide-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, military sites and civilian infrastructure, killing top commanders, scientists, and civilians. It claimed the strikes are part of a broader operation to deter Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, which the latter has consistently denied. A day later, Iran responded with hundreds of ballistic missiles in what it said was the “beginning of a crushing response to the Zionist regime”.

The two countries have since continued to target each other, with the war now entering its seventh day. While Iran and Israel remain at odds, pilgrims in Pakistan find themselves in an uncertain position, their hopes of visiting the holy land hanging by a thread.

Fear, confusion, uncertainty

Raza Zaidi had planned to celebrate Eid al-Ghadeer, a Shia religious event, in Najaf along with his mother and aunt. If all had been well, he would have been in Iraq by Saturday on his maiden trip. All arrangement — payments, visas and hotel bookings — had been finalised.

“But on Friday afternoon, I found out that FlyDubai, our carrier, had cancelled all flights operating within the airspace of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Israel,” he said. “My mother and aunt are very disheartened because Eid al-Ghadeer was the only event they hadn’t celebrated in Karbala and were really looking forward to it.”

Currently, Raza continued, everything is hanging in the air. But despite the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, he hasn’t yet sought a refund from the tour company he was travelling with. “We want to go as soon as possible if the flights are operational.

“We draw a lot of spiritual motivation from Karbala and Najaf. If the airspace had not closed, we would have been there despite the war,” he added.

While Raza’s travel plans directly clashed with the war, the current situation has also put the travel itineraries of those wanting to spend Muharram in Iraq in limbo, particularly those travelling via road, as Pakistan had earlier announced the closure of its border with Iran.

In a post on X on Wednesday night, however, the Foreign Office said: “This [is] to clarify that contrary to some media reports, all border crossings along the Pakistan-Iran border remain fully operational.”

For those travelling via road, the threat is higher because they have to make at least a two-night stop in Iran to get to Iraq, explained Moosa Raza, director of Al Haramain Travel Agency. He added that his company had received a record number of Ziarat bookings this year from across the country, for both the land and air routes. “All of them are now hanging in the middle … confused and scared.”

Fatima Sohail, a teacher based in Karachi, had been planning her trip to Iraq for over a year now. With Muharram falling during summer holidays, it was easier for her to take 10-12 days off from work.

“I visited Karbala some years ago, and it was such a fulfilling experience … I had decided then to come back. This time, I wanted to spend the first 10 days of Muharram there,” she said. Belonging to the Bohra community, Fatima’s trip was organised by Fayz-e-Husayni, a service established to cater travel needs of the community members performing Hajj, Umrah or Ziarat.

But she recently received a message from them regarding the current situation, stating that the Iraqi government had advised against travel to the country until further notice. “So we are waiting now because the airspace is shut, but chances are that the trip will get cancelled,” she sighed.

While Fatima acknowledged that there was uncertainty and the circumstances were not under anyone’s control, a flicker of hope is still alive in her. “If it is written, it will happen no matter what,” she said.

Dara Baig, also based in Karachi, who was set to fly to Iraq between the third and fourth of Muharram, concurred. Under the current scenario, he is sceptical if the trip would materialise.

“We don’t care about the war … if the airspace opens, we will be the first ones to reach the airport,” he told Dawn.com. “This is the essence of Ziarat — even when there is a fear of life, don’t quit.”

The evacuations

Both Baig and Raza also said that their relatives, who were in Iraq for the commemoration of Youm-i-Arafah, were stuck since the war broke out.

Mustafa*, who travelled to Iraq for the event, was among those who are stuck in Karbala and Najaf. He was to fly out on June 13, the same day the Israel-Iran war broke out. “But our flights were cancelled and the airspace was subsequently closed,” he said.

Unlike most who make the trip through tour operators, he managed the trip all by himself, and so he had cash to sustain himself for some days. “But people who have come along with tour groups are rapidly running low on cash … even the companies’ budgets are running out,” Mustafa told Dawn.com over the phone.

He further said that recently, Baghdad’s national flag carrier, Iraq Airways, had begun running emergency flights to Pakistan, but from Basra Airport, which is a seven-hour drive from Najaf and Karbala, where most pilgrims were staying. “On top of that, as per Iraqi policy, Pakistanis have to submit their passports at the airport upon arrival, which are later returned at the time of departure.

“We are in touch with the embassy for the issuance of passports, but it hasn’t been of much help so far,” he lamented.

Mustafa warned that further delay in evacuating the pilgrims could worsen the situation. “People are running out of medicines, food and don’t have money for accommodation. The government needs to immediately act.”

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, approximately 5,000 zaireen [pilgrims] from Pakistan are currently stranded in Iran and Iraq. In a statement on June 16, it said Iraqi Airways was operating daily flights on the Basra–Dubai route. “Those interested in travelling via this route are encouraged to contact the nearest Iraqi Airways office for booking and assistance.”

It said that the Pakistani embassy was assisting with the evacuations and was in touch with Iraqi authorities. Separately, it advised others to reconsider their travel plans to Tehran and Baghdad. In the past few days, over 1,000 pilgrims and students have returned from Iraq and Iran via the Taftan border.

Separately, on Tuesday, the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) operated its first relief flight to bring back pilgrims stuck in Iraq. PIA spokesperson Abdullah Khan told Dawn.com that the plane flew from Peshawar and boarded zaireen in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. They were brought there from Iran and Iraq via road.

“We cannot run any flights to Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria or Jordan as the entire region has been declared a war zone,” he said.

Khan said that Tuesday’s flight brought back more than 150 passengers, whose list was provided to the carrier by the Pakistani embassy — also known as the ‘manifest’ document. He added that the PIA was in close contact with the MOFA regarding the evacuations.

Journey back home

Muhammad Ali Raza was among the 1,000 pilgrims and students who returned to Pakistan via the Taftan border earlier this week. He had been in Tehran since 2019, where he was completing a PhD in economics. When Israel attacked Iran on Friday, he was at his hostel, where he heard bombs that seemed to have fallen right outside his window.

“The bombardment continued from 9pm to 5am.”

Ali described the next few days, after Iran launched its response, as the most traumatic of his life, recalling how his professors and colleagues were injured in the Israeli strikes. “Initially, we thought the matter would diffuse but by Monday, it was clear that a full-fledged war had broken out,” he told Dawn.com.

That is when he and his friends decided to reach out to the Pakistani embassy in Tehran. “We got a positive response, and on Sunday (June 15), I left for Taftan in a bus arranged by them … ironically, that was also the day I was the most scared for my life because Israel targeted public places, hostels and parks.

“We just had a 1.5-hour window to leave because after that, there was not a single road that hadn’t caved in due to strikes.”

For the next 24 hours, Ali was on the road, en route Zahedan, from where he would cross the Pakistani border. “We reached Taftan on Tuesday, where the border authorities provided us with chicken biryani for lunch along with tea,” he said.

“We will now move to our homes in Punjab from here,” the PhD student added.

Ali further stated that most of his Pakistani classmates had been evacuated from Tehran, adding that while they were happy to be back to the safety of home, they were waiting for the war to come to an end so that they could go back to what they call their second home.

Header image: Pakistani pilgrims evacuated from Iran gather upon their arrival at the Pakistan-Iran border at Taftan, in Balochistan on June 18, 2025, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. — AFP

The Air India flight AI 117, operated by a B787-8 Dreamliner, crashed on June 12, killing all but one of the 242 souls on board and over 30 people on the ground.

As investigators attempt to piece together what went wrong and come up with a reasonable explanation for why the plane would have crashed soon after takeoff, one can only hope that commercial interests, and pressure from Boeing, the plane manufacturer, will not hinder an independent investigation. This is essential to restore passenger confidence and ensure flight safety in the future.

To put this in context, ever since Boeing “shifted from an engineering culture to a sales culture,” there have been serious concerns about quality control even as extensive flight tests prior to certification have been reduced.

Unsafe surroundings

The Air India flight AI 171, bound for London, crashed within 36 seconds of takeoff from Ahmedabad, after attaining a height of 625 feet, just 1.5 kilometres from the airfield. It crashed into a concrete building, the latter constructed in what should have been a sterile 10km radius around the aerodrome, free of waste and rubbish, especially along the takeoff or approach path.

It is an unfortunate reality that almost every civilian airport in the subcontinent — India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — is surrounded by concrete structures, both residential and commercial. This is a gross irregularity, committed with the connivance of the respective regulator in each country. We experienced a similar situation in Karachi in 2020 when a PIA passenger plane travelling from Lahore crashed into a residential area a few hundred metres from the airport.

Where there is housing, there is also food waste, which provides the perfect breeding ground for big birds. These can cause major structural damage to the plane’s fuselage or engine and can also lead to a fatal accident if the foreign object damage (FOD) occurs within what is considered as the sensitive takeoff or approach phase.

The Ahmedabad Airport recorded 319 bird and wildlife strikes between January 2018 and October 2023. This is typical of many civil airports in the Subcontinent.

Here in Pakistan, politicised appointments in the Civil Aviation Authority are a major factor in compromising safety. It must be understood that there is a world of difference between commercial civil aviation, which is a highly regulated industry, and military aviation that works on a “Command and Control” structure. In all likelihood, if this concrete structure did not exist in the takeoff/ approach path of the Ahmedabad Airport, the chances of a crash landing, with relatively fewer fatalities was possible.

Faulty aircraft or pilot error?

Flight AI 117 was carrying 100 tonnes of fuel on a hot summer day. The right-wing GEnx-1B engine, manufactured by General Electric, and equipped with FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) was new, installed in March 2025, while the left-wing engine was due for servicing in December.

Air India has a fleet comprising 33 B787-8s. Certain components of this GEnx-1B engine have a fixed lifespan, which ranges between 15,000 to 20,000 cycles [A cycle is counted each time the engine is fired up, regardless of whether it is for five minutes or several hours].

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner also has an EAFR (Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorder) capable of withstanding extreme crash forces. It has two flight recorders, the Forward and Aft Recorders, each capable of storing 25 hours of crucial flight and engine parameters, besides two hours of cockpit voice and Air Traffic Control communication. According to media reports, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was recovered on June 13 and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) on June 16.

According to media reports, the recorders on Flight AI 117 are believed to be “too damaged to be processed locally” and would have to be sent to the US. The Indian government has, however, said that it has yet to decide where the recorders would be sent to be analysed. It is hoped that the recorders would provide substantive clues as to exactly what went wrong on that fateful flight.

One theory doing the rounds is that the crash may have been caused by a pilot error. According to Air India, “the flight was led by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, a highly experienced pilot and trainer with over 10,000 hours flying widebody aircraft.” It added that First Officer Clive Kunder, “had over 3,400 hours of flying experience.”

Analysts have pointed out that the landing gear on flight AI 117 was visible despite the fact that the plane had gained considerable height. It is standard operating procedure to retract the landing gear on the first indication of a positive climb, which occurs within a maximum of 6 seconds after rotation. The only reason for a delayed landing gear retraction is if the brakes are hot due to some malfunction.

Another theory being posited is that the aircraft lost one or both of its engines. However, the loss of a single engine is not a major emergency, because modern aircraft performance is based on One-Engine out — meaning it can function adequately on a single engine.

The loss of both engines, on a two-engine jet, is high unlikely. It can, however, be caused by bird congestion, simultaneous fuel starvation, or severe fuel contamination. One other cause of fuel starvation is a malfunctioning FADEC, the brain of the engine.

Another reason for the loss of both engines can be pilot error, when a live engine is cut off by mistake, instead of the failed engine. Such pilot errors, though highly unlikely, have occurred. It is part of pilot training to carry out this procedure from memory. In such a scenario, the pilot flying the aircraft brings the throttle to idle, while the pilot not flying cuts off the start lever, which effectively shuts fuel supply to the faulty engine.

In cases of emergency, a Ram Air Turbine (RAT) is also available on the aircraft to maintain essential flight systems in the event of a complete loss of power. In fact, investigators believe the system was likely operating when the aircraft crashed. Moreover, in the event that the engine catches fire, the pilot must pull the fire handle and activate the fire extinguisher.

All commercial airlines regularly conduct simulator checks every six months or earlier, which are monitored by the regulator. This is mandatory for pilot license renewal. The civil aviation regulator is required to ensure that such periodical checks are carried. It is also essential that the CAA/ regulator employ the services of an independent qualified pilot inspector, with experience on the particular type of aircraft and who should have no conflicts of interest.

Boeing’s troubles

Over the last several years, Boeing has witnessed its fair share of turmoil regarding the safety, or lack thereof, of some of its aircraft. On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610, operated by B737 Max plunged into the Java Sea within minutes of takeoff, killing 189 people, while pilots struggled for control over an automated signal which pushed the nose down, sensing an impending stall. Indonesian investigators later blamed Boeing for a combination of aircraft design flaws, inadequate training and maintenance problems, adding that pilots were never told how to quickly respond to malfunctions of the aircraft’s automated flight-control system.

Around six months later on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed after takeoff, killing 157 people. Within days of the second crash, Boeing tried to pin the blame on the pilots, but later accepted full responsibility for the crash, having “produced an airplane that had an unsafe condition”. This came after investigators found faults in the sensors and new flight control software that had not been explained to pilots.

Last year, yet another incident involving a 737 Max shattered confidence in the aircraft manufacturer when the door plug of Alaska flight 1282 blew out mid-flight, leaving a neat, refrigerator-sized, rectangular hole in the plane. The aircraft was subsequently able to land safely, with no injuries reported. Boeing later paid $160 million to Alaska Airlines as compensation for the incident.

In the recent past, conscientious whistleblowers, motivated by concerns for flight safety, have been persecuted by Boeing, while the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), under the influence of powerful members of the Congress, preferred to look the other way. Design and manufacturing faults, involving the Boeing 737MAX were ignored, including concerns about the flight control system, and no information was provided to pilots about any malfunctions. The aircraft itself was rolled out in haste, within a year of undergoing flight tests in August 2015. Previously, exhaustive tests, carried over a period of two to three years were essential for certification.

This is precisely what happens when powerful aircraft manufacturers, in collusion with regulators and unethical elements within government, are motivated by commercial profits alone, ignoring passenger safety concerns.

For now, both Boeing and General Electric — the manufacturer of the engine — have said they are prepared to support the investigators. The Air India B787-8 Dreamliner crash is the first major fatal crash of this aircraft. In January 2013, all B787s were grounded for nearly three weeks, following incidents of fire and smoke of Lithium-Ion batteries.

On April 17, 2024, The New York Times carried a report that a whistleblower Boeing Engineer, Sam Salehpour, appeared before the US Congress, pointing out safety concerns and irregularities in production shortcuts when sections of the Dreamliner were fastened together, which could “eventually lead to a crash if they continued unchecked”. He warned that lightweight composite materials, “improperly fastened together could break apart mid-flight after thousands of hours”. He was accompanied by another whistleblower, Ed Pierson, a former senior manager, who had previously testified before Congress about the B737MAX, along with an engineer Joe Jacobsen and a former airline pilot, identified as Shawn Pruchnicki.

Here too, however, commercial interests prevailed. Salehpour was punished by his superiors. As of now, it is too early to tell what really caused Air India’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. As investigators move to ascertain the facts, however, one thing is clear: whether this was a pilot error or a malfunction in the aircraft, this accident could have been avoided.

Header image: This handout taken and posted on the X account of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on June 12, 2025 shows the back of the Air India plane after it crashed in a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad. — AFP/ File

The year 1990 marked the beginning of America’s “endless wars” in the Middle East. It commenced with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait — before that, US military operations in the region had been short-term or temporary. In the years that followed, ‘coming back home’ for the superpower has become increasingly difficult.

Over two decades on, the US once again stood at one of its “biggest and riskiest foreign policy gamble”, as Reuters described it. On June 21, the US military bombed Iran’s nuclear sites on the orders of President Donald Trump, directly joining Israel’s war on its regional arch-nemesis.

“Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” Trump said in a televised address from the White House, adding that they targeted the crucial underground nuclear enrichment plant of Fordow along with facilities at Natanz and Isfahan.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he added.

America’s B-2 bombers were involved in the strikes, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity after reports earlier in the day said B-2 bombers — which carry so-called “bunker buster” bombs — were headed out of the US.

Tehran termed the US attacks a violation of international law, adding that it was “resolved to defend Iran’s territory, sovereignty, security and people by all force”.

After 12 days of war, Trump, in a post on X last night, announced that a ceasefire had been reached between Iran and Israel. The Islamic Republic’s foreign minister said, however, that there would be no cessation of hostilities unless Israel stopped its attacks.

These recent developments have pushed the Middle East to the edge. The region holds its breath, waiting to see if the US move marks the end of the conflict or the beginning of the third world war. But the US is no stranger to such situations.

War on Lebanon (1982-83)

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon while the latter was embroiled in a civil war. According to various reports, Tel Aviv’s military operation was designed to militarily and politically debilitate the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The group’s leader, Yasir Arafat, was based in Beirut at the time.

The war was immensely destructive, killing thousands of civilians and fighters.

By September, the US had entered the war, dispatching battleships USS John Rodgers and nuclear cruiser USS Virginia to the Lebanese shores. American gunboats engaged in the bombing of several targets, including the town of Suk Al-Gharb. The mission stretched for 17 months and left 262 US servicemen dead. The first US Marine to die during the war was killed while defusing a bomb in the same month.

“If Washington had been clearer-headed and braver, it could have prevented Mr Begin’s [then-Israel prime minister] adventure and saved thousands of lives,” wrote the Guardian.

On February 7, 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced the end of US participation in the peacekeeping force.

“Reagan’s decision to withdraw the Marines remains controversial. Supporters argue that it did not make sense to sacrifice American lives and resources to help resolve a conflict where the parties involved showed little interest in working toward US goals. Critics, however, claim that Reagan failed to stand firm against terrorism and demonstrated that the United States was an undependable ally,” according to the US Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute.

War on Libya (1986 and 2011)

In April 1986, the United States launched air strikes on Libya against ‘‘terrorist centres’’ and military bases, the New York Times reported. In a speech broadcast nationally, Reagan said the American forces had “succeeded” in retaliating against Libya for what he called the “reign of terror” waged by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

The American attacks were mounted by 14 A-6E Navy attack jets based in the Mediterranean and 18 F-111 bombers from bases in England. In the months that followed, US air and naval forces carried out a series of strikes on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, resulting in the deaths of at least 40 civilians, including Gaddafi’s daughter.

One of the targets was Colonel Gaddafi’s personal residential compound on the grounds of the Bab al-Aziziya army barracks. Forewarned, Colonel Gaddafi escaped unharmed, according to the New York Times.

Operation El Dorado Canyon, as it was code-named, was deemed a success by US officials. In subsequent years, America continued to keep a close eye on Libya, targeting it again.

In 2011, a Nato military coalition led by the US, Britain and France intervened in the Libyan civil war with airstrikes and a naval blockade. The objective? To protect civilian lives. But as the New York Times reported, “ […] the effect was to tip the balance in the fighting in favour of anti-Gaddafi forces, who ultimately drove him from power and killed him“.

Subsequent attempts to form a civilian government in Libya failed, with another civil war breaking out in 2014. Over the next two years, American warplanes carried out a series of strikes to target “Islamic state leader and Tunisian terrorists taking refuge in the anarchy of post-Gaddafi Libya”.

The Iraq War (1991-2011)

The Persian Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Storm, began in 1991 after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990. This prompted neighbouring Arab countries to call for US intervention.

The Iraqi invasion was immediately condemned by then-President George HW Bush. A few months on, a fleet of US Air Force fighter jets, accompanied by Nato troops, began arriving in Saudi Arabia. By September, the UN Security Council authorised the use of “all necessary means” of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw from Kuwait by January 1991.

On January 17, 1991, a massive US-led air offensive hit Iraq. The war resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands and the establishment of US military bases in the Gulf. It also sowed the seeds of many other military interventions in the following years, the impact of which can be felt in the region even today.

With the Iraqi resistance collapsing, Bush declared a ceasefire in February, ending the Persian Gulf War. In all, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi forces were killed.

However, following the 9/11 attacks, the US once again fixated its guns on Iraq with President George W Bush calling for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq in 2002. The US claimed it had intelligence that the country possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction. By the next year, Bush demanded that Saddam Hussein step down from power and leave Iraq within 48 hours. Hussein’s refusal to do so led to the second Persian Gulf War, popularly known as the Iraq War.

Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces on December 13, 2003, and executed on December 30, 2006, for “committing crimes against humanity”. The United States would not formally withdraw from Iraq until December 2011.

War on Afghanistan (2001-2021)

After the 9/11 attacks, the US announced its war on terror, and Afghanistan was its biggest target. On October 7, 2001, a US-led coalition began attacks on Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces — a conflict that would span two decades and become the longest war in US history.

Codenamed “Operation Enduring Freedom”, the invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at targeting Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. The invasion began with the bombardment of Taliban and al-Qaeda installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and Mazar-i-Sharif.

The aerial attacks were followed by a ground invasion. On November 12, Taliban officials and their forces retreated from Kabul, and a month later, the last Taliban stronghold, Kandahar, too, had fallen. By 2002, a transitional government led by Hamid Karzai was established in Kabul.

However, as the US focus from Afghanistan shifted to Iraq, the Taliban got a chance to regroup. Subsequently, in 2008, Bush decided to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan, with the number of US troops rising to 48,500 by mid-2008.

When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, this number reached an all-time high of 100,000. However, after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Obama announced that the US would begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. However, some back and forth was seen regarding the same in the following years until 2021, when the Taliban and the Trump administration reached an agreement for US troops to fully withdraw by 2021 in exchange for stopping attacks against US forces and cutting ties with al-Qaeda.

By August of the same year, the Taliban entered Kabul, and all US troops exited Afghanistan.

Syrian war (2011)

In 2011, what started as a protest movement spiralled into a civil war in Syria against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. When the situation worsened, the US intervened, with President Obama and Western allies explicitly calling on Assad to stand down.

What followed were sanctions on the Syrian government and the US ambassador leaving the country.

In 2013, Washington said that the Assad regime had carried out a chemical attack near Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people. The attack prompted Obama to mull striking Syria, but he pulled out last minute and instead agreed to a deal with Moscow, which was aimed at dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, according to Al Jazeera.

A year later, however, US and Arab allies launched air raids in Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group, expanding a campaign underway in neighbouring Iraq at the time. In 2017, when Trump came to power, US forces fired a barrage of missiles at the Shayrat airbase, which was said to be the launch site of a chemical attack that resulted in the killing of 88 people.

A year later, the US launched fresh attacks after an alleged Syrian government chemical attack on the then-rebel-held town of Douma killed 40 people.

Then, in 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 US troops in Syria because ISIL had been “defeated”. However, a year later, a suicide attack claimed by ISIL killed four US servicemen and 15 others at a restaurant in northern Syria in what was termed as the deadliest attack on US forces.

Later the same year, the US announced that its forces would withdraw from Syria to make way for a “long-planned operation” by Turkish forces — a decision that caused an uproar in Washington.

War on Yemen

Yemen has remained a Western target for a while now. But drone strikes on Yemen became frequent under the Obama and Trump administrations, according to the Middle East Eye.

These attacks often took place through the use of the US military drone programme, and were justified as part of the US ‘war on terror’, particularly to target al-Qaeda operatives. The US also aided Saudi Arabia in its bombing of the Houthis.

In December 2023, the US initiated Operation Prosperity Guardian in response to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which began following Israel’s invasion of Gaza. By 2024, the Biden administration re-designated the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) group.

Header image: A US army soldier stands with his weapon at a military base in the Makhmour area near Mosul during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 18, 2016. — Reuters

Waqar Baloch, based in the bordering town of Jaheen in Balochistan’s Panjgur, was all set for his wedding next week. But for a groom, his anxiety was of a different kind— half of his family was in Iran, where Israel is waging a war.

The ongoing standoff between Tehran and Tel Aviv has sent ripples across the Middle East, with both sides refusing to drop their guns. But while the global attention is fixated on the Mashriq, the conflict — which is feared to spiral into a third world war — has disrupted daily life in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most underdeveloped province.

The province, which shares a 909-kilometre border with Iran, has been reeling from food shortages, a surge in fuel prices, the risk of unemployment, and heightened security concerns ever since the Iran-Israel war broke out. Families like Waqar’s are bearing the brunt of these tensions.

“One of my paternal uncles is a resident of Iran, and many of our family members live across the border,” he told Dawn.com. “They won’t be able to attend our wedding anymore.”

Waqar added that several items for his wedding — electronics, jewellery, and perfumes — were stuck at the border town of Paroom. Yet, he has decided not to change the wedding date, hoping the situation will soon de-escalate.

Just a few days after the war broke out, Pakistan closed border crossing points with Iran for an indefinite period. These include the key trade and transit hub Taftan, as well as pedestrian routes at Danuk, Cheedgi, and Jirak-Proom in Panjgur, Kech, Gwadar, and Washuk district. While the Foreign Office earlier announced that the border was fully functional, residents contradicted the statement, saying all crossing points had been closed.

For his part, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti chaired a high-level meeting on Sunday to ensure the continued supply of food, fuel, and electricity in border towns, which have traditionally relied on Iran for supplies.

Cross-border trade

Zubair Baloch, a trader in Panjgur, depends on the Iran border for his livelihood. The last few days have been difficult for him to say the least.

“If this situation continues for a few more weeks, we will have to halt our children’s studies. We can’t afford their expenses or keep our business shut any longer,” he said.

Like Zubair, Hafiz Muslim, who lives in Mashkhel border town, feels like the clocks have reversed. “Markets are closed … we can hear the azan from across the border, but we can’t visit our family members on the other side,” he said.

There are many people like Zubair and Hafiz on both sides of the Pakistan-Iran border, who heavily rely on cross-border trade. Any conflict in either country directly affects their livelihoods and the communities living near the crossings.

“Most goods, edible commodities, and construction materials in these areas are imported through both formal and informal channels,” explained Dr Manzoor Baloch, economist and pro-vice chancellor of Gwadar University. “There is little by way of consumption, but there are huge impacts on the value chain of trade and business on both sides.”

Fuel and food crisis

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has not just impacted trade but also severely restricted the movement of goods and people in the region, creating a shortage of daily necessities in parts of Balochistan, including the provincial capital, Quetta.

“Bakery items like biscuits, cakes, baby milk, and other cooking necessities in Balochistan heavily rely on Iran,” explained Ghulam Hussain Baloch, a local trader in Balochistan’s coastal city of Gwadar. He added that many parts of Balochistan also depend on Iran for liquefied natural gas (LNG), fuel, and electricity.

Since the war broke out, Hussain told Dawn.com, a fuel crisis has gripped the province. “Due to these shortages, prices have skyrocketed.” A 2024 joint intelligence report revealed that nearly 10 million litres of Iranian petrol and diesel were entering Pakistan daily via land and sea. This fuel, which is normally sold for almost Rs50-60 cheaper than local sources, is vital for Balochistan’s remote regions — which are already impoverished and vulnerable — where even local supplies are hard to deliver due to high transportation costs.

“We are unable to travel to other parts of the province,” lamented Hafiz. “I’m especially worried that if someone falls seriously ill and needs urgent treatment … how will we take them to hospitals in other parts of Balochistan?”

The fuel shortages are also hitting agriculture hard, the only alternative livelihood for residents of border towns.

“The cost of running tractors and other machinery, like water boring engines, has increased due to the ongoing fuel shortage in our native border regions, particularly in the Prom area of Panjgur,” said Waqar.

The unsaid fears

The area most impacted by the Israel-Iran war, though, is the Makran division, which primarily relies on the neighbour for electricity. Power outages in cities such as Gwadar, Turbat and Panjgur could severely impact daily life, primarily the hospitals, businesses and schools dependent on it.

Fida Hussain Dashti, a resident of Kech district and former president of the Balochistan Chamber of Commerce, told Dawn.com that the Makran and Rakhshan divisions of the province are also entirely dependent on informal trade with Iran. “For the past several days, vegetables and fresh produce ready for export to Iran are stuck here,” he lamented.

Another growing concern, Dashti continued, is the potential influx of refugees if the conflict continues. He recalled how the same in the 1980s affected the local economy and disrupted ties among Baloch families across the border.

“The arrival of a large number of displaced people can overwhelm the already impoverished border communities here and ultimately strain the deeply rooted tradition of ‘Baloch hospitality’,” he said.

Threat of rise in militancy

Over the last couple of decades, both Pakistan’s Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan-va-Baluchistan province have witnessed secular militancy and ethno-religious armed conflict. On this side of the border, militants seek ‘separatism’. On that side, the struggle is primarily for the rights of the Sunni Muslim and Baloch populations.

Amid the current tensions, several secular Baloch militant groups with cross-border ambitions appear to be preparing to ‘seize the opportunity’, per security analysts. Among them are the ethno-religious Jaish-ul-Adl (Army of Justice), the Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA–Beebarg), and the Free Balochistan Movement (FBM). These groups have either indicated or openly announced their intent to take advantage of the Iran-Israel conflict in the region.

“The war risks diverting both Iran’s attention and resources away from Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province,” Malik Siraj Akbar, a journalist who has extensively covered armed conflicts in Balochistan, told Dawn.com. “The trajectory of this situation will be significantly influenced by Pakistan’s stance towards the war. If the United States pressures Pakistan to avoid supporting Iran, the border regions shared with Iran may become increasingly vulnerable to attacks by Sunni militant groups.”

In such a scenario, he continued, Pakistan is unlikely to crack down on these groups as they identify more by their Sunni religious identity than by their ethnic Baloch roots.

Talking about the war’s impact and push factors on other Baloch militants operating in Pakistan, Akbar said: “The government is expected to bolster security along its Balochistan border, especially in areas adjacent to Iran. This move may indirectly benefit Sunni militant groups, but it is unlikely to create any meaningful opportunities for left-leaning Baloch nationalist factions. A heavily monitored and securitised border will complicate cross-border operations, making it harder for Baloch insurgents to launch attacks in Pakistan and escape to Iran.”

“An alliance between the Baloch nationalists and the Sunni militants would be temporary but does not offer long-term promise due to their ideological differences.” It would be an attempt to “stretch their resources” by Baloch secular militant outfits to jump into it, he said.

“Ironically, the collapse of the current Iranian regime would go against the interests of the Baloch nationalists in Pakistan because it would lead to the rise of Sunni extremists who would likely act as the Taliban did with Pashtun nationalists in KP and FATA,” the analyst added.

For now, however, the local population on either side of border waits with baited breath as they hope the ceasefire announced by US President Trump holds and they can go back to their daily lives.

Header image: Iranian cargo trucks cross into the Pakistan-Iran border at Taftan, Balochistan, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. — AFP

It was a sultry summer morning. Mir Shah Mohammad Talpur was visiting his sprawling mango orchards, located on the outskirts of Hyderabad, to inspect the year’s produce. However, the ruthless sun glaring on his back and mercury rising to 43.2 degrees Celsius were making things difficult for Mir.

For the mangoes, though, these climatic conditions were in tandem with their harvest.

Mir’s orchard is spread across 450 acres of land. “I have been looking after the bagh for six years … many trees here are around 50 years old,” he told Dawn.com. The 49-year-old wore a black sun cap along with a neck flap to avoid exposure to the intense heat.

Like many in the area, Mir too sublets his mango orchard — a practice in vogue, by and large, in Sindh. Only a few growers, including those who believe in progressive farming, manage their own orchards. The province is known for its Sindhri mangoes, harvested in the first week of June.

Despite other varieties such as Saroli, Dasehri and Langra, which are harvested as early as mid-May, Sindhri remains the most preferred choice of mango lovers. It is not just an export favourite, but also used as a ‘seasonal gift’ by politicians and top-level government functionaries.

“This time, Sindhri is being picked quite early thanks to the market dynamics,” said Mir. “The falling of the fruit from trees indicates that it is now ripe and ready for harvest.” For this year’s harvest, he signed an agreement with Haji Ramazan Siyal, a contractor from Multan.

From trees to plates

At Mir’s orchard, labourers from Punjab, who routinely cross over to this side of the provincial border during the season, are busy with various chores — climbing trees to pluck mangoes, sorting the fruits for export consignments and local market consumption, and cooking food.

These labourers — many of them hailing from southern Punjab’s districts of Muzaffargarh, Layyah, Dera Ghazi Khan and Multan — stay in the orchards for over a month until the end of the harvesting season and the subsequent marketing.

They then leave for Punjab, where harvesting begins relatively late. These workers have expertise in preparing bardana (wooden boxes), bharawa (filling of mangoes in boxes), thukawa (packing of mangoes) and turawa (plucking). Their dexterity is on show as they swiftly move through the orchards.

Picking of mangoes is conventionally known as ‘pattaee’ in the Sindhi language. A few farm workers climb the trees, while others stand underneath with polypropylene bags in their hands. These specific bags are used to ensure that not a single mango touches the earth below, which can damage the shape and quality of the king of fruits.

The mangoes plucked thus far are collected at a separate location to make a mound of them before they are graded. The ubiquitous sweet smell of unripe mangoes pervades this part of the orchard.

Shift from conventional to modern ways

At Mir’s farm, however, Siyal’s labourers, including his young son, Mudassir Siyal, have shifted away from conventional harvesting or pattaee. Instead, they pick every mango in a small bag, whose edge is fixed with a sharp cutter. This process reduces the labour, because the fruit is collected in a basket and then shifted for manual sorting and grading.

“I feel the fruit suffers shock inside in the pattaee way of harvesting,” says Mir, seated under the canopy shade of an old mango tree. “This year, labourers are clearing trees in quite an efficient way to avoid losses.” Soon, Siyal’s men bring out servings of mangoes.

According to Siyal, Mir’s orchard needs massive pruning of stems to let sunlight and air pass through easily. “I have given some advice to Mir saheb on how to cut large branches of trees that are at present entangled considerably. It should be done across the orchard,” he says.

“I started working as a labourer to climb trees for picking mangoes, and then went on to become a contractor. I bought my first bagh in the early 1970s for Rs30,000 and now my son works with me,” he adds.

The contractor provides high-quality mangoes to exporters, besides selling them in domestic wholesale markets across Sindh, under a business deal for export to Iran. Each carton invariably carries eight to nine kilogrammes of mangoes. Exporters usually arrive in orchards after contacting contractors, while some are now working as orchard contractors themselves.

However, many growers avoid managing orchards themselves. “Handling a mango orchard and then marketing the fruit is not everyone’s cup of tea,” said Nadeem Shah, who owns an orchard in Matiari. “I tried managing it sometime back, but then backed out. It’s a tricky business that I find difficult to deal with.”

Threat to mangoes

The acreage of mango orchards has dwindled in the last five years, from 59,100 hectares in 2019-20 to 58,900 hectares in 2023-24. Mango production, however, showed a slight increase from 329,300 tonnes in 2019-20 and 387,200 tonnes in 2023-24. These figures, however, present a dismal picture when compared to a decade ago, when the acreage stood at 63,144 hectares with production of 402,514 tonnes, according to data from the Sindh agriculture department.

Mango producers fear that the fruit’s production will drop considerably this year due to various factors. Earlier this year, mangoes suffered shocks apparently due to climate change-driven weather patterns. Severe water shortage at critical stages of flowering and fruiting in February and March was another major factor that affected the mango crop.

The water shortage has also affected Mir’s mango orchards. “Look at the size of the mango … it’s 970 grams, but this could have been more than 1,000 grams or even closer to 1,100 grams if we provided water to the orchard before harvesting,” he lamented. Watering trees before plucking makes the land underneath marshy, thus restricting the mobility of workers.

If this was not enough, a disease called malformation and a pest known as hopper damaged the crop. It was again followed by substantial damages due to powerful wind storms that visited Hyderabad, Tando Allahyar and Mirpurkhas — hub of mango production — causing massive dropping of unripe mangoes. Some signs of malformed flowers were still present in the trees.

Malformation is a disease, and growers can only control it by removing the malformed flowers as soon as they appear in the trees. According to Mahmood Nawaz Shah, a progressive grower and Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) president, hopper is most lethal at the time of flowering.

“For the last few years, hopper attacks have become quite common. We don’t get research-oriented and evidence-based advice from the agriculture department on how to deal with it,” he regrets.

‘Axe to grind’

Zulfiqar Ali Kachelo has inherited a hefty legacy of the mango farming business in the lower Sindh region. He is a member of the fifth-generation Kachelo family, running the mango orchard trade and diversifying it from conventional trade to e-commerce. Ali’s family cumulatively owns a couple of thousand acres of mango farms in Mirpurkhas.

“I primarily stand for managing orchards myself, as it helps grow the local area’s economy,” he told Dawn.com. “We need to train local farm workers instead of relying on their counterparts from parts of the country.” He also sublets his farm, but on an alternative basis. “If I let out some part of the orchard to a contractor some year, the next year I handle it myself, which helps me learn the trade dynamics and trends.”

The issues of malformation and pests are affecting farms regularly, he said. “And we find no solution for it at the government level. The only activity the government is associated with is an annual mango festival with no productive discourse being seen there except for routine mango season’s celebrations,” he criticises.

So, he lamented, the growers depend on their own wisdom or the private sector. “But then the private sector has its axe to grind,” he said, adding that the government’s support for mango orchards, by and large, is almost zero.

SAB’s Nawaz concurred that the government’s support for farmers when it came to tackling diseases was missing. For the past three years, consistent pest attacks along with malformation have been witnessed, making farmers following progressive farm protocols extraordinarily cautious.

“They regularly used sprays to control these issues,” he says, recalling that when malformation was reported in 2023, it caused substantial losses — 20pc to 25pc in the overall mango production.

“Learning from the past, these farmers had somewhat better control in 2024,” Nawaz says. “This year again, malformation was quite massive. Growers having some knowledge applied the required sprays, but those lacking awareness lagged and suffered losses.”

This is the reason why mangoes remain undersized. The incidence of pest attack was also quite evident on the fruit in terms of its quality.

For now, however, Sindh’s mangoes continue their journey — from branches to plates and gift boxes — bringing a touch of sweetness that makes the sweltering summer heat a little more bearable. Across the board, there’s agreement: mangoes, in all their forms, sizes, and flavours, are the season’s greatest joy. But if the pressing issues plaguing mango production are not urgently addressed, we may soon risk losing the king of fruits.

Header image: A worker carries mangoes in a basket after plucking them from trees. — All photos by Umair Ali

In the early 2010s, Iran believed that a war waged against it by Israel, which would pull in the United States, was an inevitability. At the time, American newspapers were warning that Israel was on the verge of bombing Iran, the IAEA was working hand in glove with the Americans to increase pressure on the Persians, and the country was being suffocated by sanctions that were only looking to get worse.

The Iranians, according to political analyst Trita Parsi, made a strategic calculation at the time — that the war would come and it would devastate them, but it would also destroy the Americans.

In this book, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, Parsi notes that Iranian officials thought the Iraq war had already turned the US into a ‘limping giant’, that another war in the region would end its superpower status, and that it would no longer be able to dominate the Middle East. Sure, they ventured, Iran would be ruined by the war, but they placed their hope on the longevity of Persia as a civilisation. Iran would endure, they thought. It would bounce back after a few decades and take its place in the sun after defeating the United States.

The Americans were bewildered when they first found out that this was a grim but genuine conclusion the Iranians had reached. In the face of subjugation, they would choose annihilation. The Obama administration became more acquainted with the way Iranians thought while negotiating the nuclear framework deal. A senior White House official noted: “The Iranians simply won’t capitulate [even if faced with war],”, adding “[be]cause they’re Iranians.”

The ceasefire

On June 22, seven American stealth bombers dropped twelve 30,000 pound bombs on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility and two on Natanz, while the research facility in Isfahan was targeted with twelve Tomahawk missiles. In response, Iran targeted Al-Udeid air base in Qatar with 19 missiles, in what it says was like for like. Though really it was as unlike as you could get; advance notice was given of the strikes and they were easily intercepted. Shortly after, there was a ceasefire.

While the ‘Twelve Day’ war seems to have come to an end, Iran has come out of this round (for there will be future rounds) looking somewhat strong even at its weakest. As is often the case, the weaker country has the most to gain from a ceasefire. Iran, having lost Syria, unable to rely on a hollowed out Hezbollah, and suffering early blows from an audacious Mossad infiltration, is the weakest it’s been in decades. Still, it has shown that despite it being more isolated than ever, despite its immensely vulnerability from the air, and despite its lack of advanced weaponry, it can still fight.

Meanwhile, Israel comes out of this weakened. It has not been able to win a war against Hamas, a resistance group with enhanced fireworks as weapons, and it has not been able to win against Iran, which proved that the Iron Dome is more an Iron Sieve which can be countered by strategically saturating Israel’s air defence with missiles. Already running low on missile interceptors and fearing a lengthy war of attrition would be unpopular among its populace, Israel agreed to a ceasefire despite its military supremacy. Netanyahu has proven that while he may huff and he may puff, but he cannot blow your house down. The Israelis no longer look inviolable.

The right to enrich

At the heart of this war is the selective denial of the Iranians’ sovereign right to enrich. This is a right they are entitled to under the Non-Proliferation Treaty which allows states to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Iran’s enrichment rights were also endorsed in 2012 by 120 states (including Pakistan) in the Non-Aligned Movement, undermining the argument that the state’s quest is a rogue one.

Iran’s negotiations with Trump failed because while he initially said he was willing to discuss measures imposed on Iran’s right to weaponise — get nuclear weapons — but not its nuclear capability — which would include enrichment for peaceful purposes, he later fell back on the Bush-era and Israel-endorsed red line that Iran does not have the right to enrich at all, let alone weaponise.

The Obama administration had allowed the Iranians this right but imposed limits on its ability to weaponise in exchange for sanctions relief. It had also ensured that Iran’s nuclear programme would be subject to IAEA oversight and safeguards. While Iran has many stocks of 60 per cent uranium, it does not have stocks of uranium which is 90 per cent enriched — the amount required for nuclear warheads.

Nuclear ‘haves’ vs ‘have nots’

The Non-Proliferation Treaty has been criticised for creating nuclear apartheid; dividing the haves and the have nots. Those who already have nuclear weapons are to pursue good faith negotiations towards nuclear disarmament — with the provision drafted in fuzzy legalese which has never been acted upon — while no other state is allowed to acquire the bomb. The Iranians are party to the NPT, having signed it on the first day possible [they are now contemplating withdrawing from it], and seek the right to enrich, whereas Israel is not and possesses nuclear weapons.

This same pattern has also been observed with Saudi Arabia which also wants to enrich uranium. Journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Bob Woodward, in his latest book, War, quotes from a meeting between American Senator Lindsey Graham and Saudi crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman. During the meeting, which he says took place in Saudi Arabia and broached the topic of Muhammad Bin Salman’s desire to enrich, Graham reportedly said: “that’s going to be hard to do because people are afraid you’ll create a bomb”. The Saudi leader reportedly replied: “I don’t need uranium to make a bomb … I’ll just buy one from Pakistan.”

For Iran, the right to enrich is a sovereign issue they refuse to give up. In 2009, 96 per cent of Iranians believed that sanctions were worth the price of retaining the country’s enrichment right. In How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, a university professor interviewed by the authors said that “If the nuclear sanctions get removed … then the West will sanction us for our ballistic missiles. Then it’ll be human rights sanctions. Then it’ll be another reason for sanctions. Just look at any country that has challenged Western power — whether political or economic — what do you see? They get sanctioned in order to break their will and make them succumb to Western power.”

While this is undoubtedly true, the right to enrich has come at a steep price. Sanctions dealt a serious blow to Iran’s economy, affecting its growth and resulting in sharply declining living standards. Its banks have been cut off from SWIFT, the global network that allows financial transactions and even during the Coronavirus pandemic, Iran could buy medicines and pharmaceutical goods but could not pay for them because of sanctions. Meanwhile, its nuclear scientists have been assassinated in droves, often by remote controlled bombs, and cyber attacks have been conducted on energy and electricity grids.

The IAEA’s hypocrisy

At the same time, Iran has had to deal with a heavily politicised IAEA. The Agency’s bent against Iran can be traced back to at least 2009 when a Japanese diplomat, Yukiya Amano, was appointed its head in 2009, who WikiLeaks later revealed had said in a meeting with the US ambassador that “he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program”. In 2011, a new IAEA report was published, which was to further increase pressure on Iran, including to cut it off from other developing countries that had resisted American efforts to leave Iran out in the cold. It seems Amano was largely passing on much of the information provided by Israel without engaging in fact checking.

The report, for the first time, suggested Iran may have an ongoing nuclear weapons programme, going against earlier IAEA assessments, US intelligence reports, and to the censure of former IAEA officials themselves, including former director general, Hans Blix, who said it was irresponsible to base conclusions on information that had not been verified. Other officials decried that the report was reminiscent of intelligence provided to the IAEA to help Bush’s case for war against Iraq. This faulty intel (provided by the Italians) had stated that the Iraqis had bought uranium from Niger only for then IAEA head Mohammad ElBaradei to check them and demonstrate to the Security Council that the documents had been forged.

The Iranians are again alleging that the incumbent IAEA head, Rafael Grossi, is in cahoots with the West, having published a report stating that Iran had violated its safeguarding agreement with the Agency, and that it could not ignore that this raised ‘proliferation concerns’, only to later say, after Iran had been bombed, that there was no proof Iran wanted a nuclear weapon. What is clear, however, is that the American and Israeli attacks on nuclear sites were unlawful.

Unlawful attacks

The United States, in joining Israel’s attacks against Iran, has also violated the prohibition on the use of force in the UN Charter. Neither state has any evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon. Indeed, US intelligence agencies continue to believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to build the bomb. Furthermore, there is also no indication that were the weapon to be built, Iran intends to use it against Israel.

Additionally, the laws of war also protect nuclear power plants during armed conflicts, obliging states to refrain from attacking them for such an attack could release dangerous forces. As Iran likely removed the nuclear material from the nuclear sites hit, this has not resulted in radioactive contamination. However, the IAEA had warned that any direct hit on Bushehr, Iran’s nuclear power plant, could result in a major radiation crisis. Al Jazeera reported that “on June 19, the Israeli military said that it had attacked Bushehr, but later said that the announcement was a mistake”.

Many commentators have pointed out that, as with Iraq after its Osirak nuclear reactor was hit by Israel in 1981, the strikes on nuclear sites will merely further Iran’s resolve to obtain the bomb. Iraq was prompted and emboldened by the strike to pursue a serious weapons programme, before it was dismantled in the First Gulf War. It is likely Iran will do the same.

A place in the haves

Former President Obama said in his inaugural address in 2009, “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. … We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Now that Iran is through this round of conflict, regime unchanged, it will likely return to the negotiating table to haggle over its enrichment. While the West believes regime change will bring about a change in Tehran’s nuclear policy, it is wrong. Even if they had brought the Shah’s son into power to do their bidding, he would have eventually cut those ties to smile at the West and build the bomb. Instead, they have the Ayatollahs who scowl at the West and build the bomb.

Both know that the clenched fist is all the West understands; they must enrich away.

Header image: An Iranian flag is pictured near a missile during a military drill, with the participation of Iran’s Air Defense units, Iran, October 2020. — Reuters/File

This past week, the Supreme Court’s ‘Constitutional Bench’ — itself still under constitutional challenge — decided to strip the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the single-largest party in Parliament, of its reserved seats.

It also went one further: it thought to hand those seats to the ruling coalition. Thus, for the first time in our history, nearly two dozen seats were gifted to the same parties that had lost at the polls.

To break this down further: the public’s votes were doled out to those they had voted against. The result is an unelected ‘unity’ regime being handed a two-thirds majority, the very haul it needs to mangle the Constitution in earnest.

We know this to be true because of the disaster that has been the 26th Amendment — around last fall, the coalition parties were smarting from their lack of numbers. It was only after months of cajoling or coercing opposition lawmakers that the amendment could be passed — that too as a watered-down version of an even more atrocious bill.

But after this latest verdict, the Constitutional Bench has served that Constitution on a platter to the rejected parties: they can now reshape our legal order all by themselves.

This is because the PTI’s reserved seats are what tipped the scale: to meet the magic number of 224 seats (in a 336-strong assembly), the regime, at roughly 213 altogether, needed another 11 to get over the line.

They now have those and more: up for grabs were the PTI’s 22 reserved seats, and the coalition got all of them; 14 to PML-N, 5 to PPP, and 3 to fence-sitter JUI-F.

In sum, amendments can pass easily now, regardless of whether their authors were voted in or not. If the Constitution Bench’s view is anything to go by, democracy is besides the point.

What are reserved seats?

Reserved seats have a long and storied past in Pakistan — they were one of founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s core demands, put to British rulers as well as the Hindu majority.

And with reason: to ensure historically underrepresented groups get a say in Parliament. That’s why, of the total 70 reserved seats in the National Assembly at present, 60 have been earmarked for women; 10 for religious minorities.

Given that equal opportunity doesn’t always mean equal participation, these candidates have been shielded from the rough and tumble of a direct election. They are instead allotted seats from pre-existing party lists after the election is over, in proportion to how many general seats their party has won.

It follows that the more general seats a party wins, the more the reserves that fall in its share.

That is, until the Constitutional Bench’s ruling: having turned that formula on its head, the Court has shown it’s better to lose with the system than win against it.

Take, for example, the absurd outcomes trickling out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: in a province the PTI swept last year, the PML-N, PPP, and JUI-F are now eyeing more seats in reserve than what they’d won in the general election. The PPP, for example, hopes to bag two reserves — despite securing just one seat in the actual polls.

Apart from women and minorities, the Constitutional Bench seems to have created a third category: losers that serve democracy’s latest derailment.

How did all of this start?

It begins, as so much of this judicial surrender does, with former Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa. More specifically, with Isa’s infamous bat symbol verdict, yanking away the PTI’s electoral symbol right before the polls. Punishment, per the Isa Court, for not holding intra-party elections.

Enough ink has been spilt over how gross that verdict was (far more, it must be said, than when a similar decision stripped the PML-N of its lion symbol before the Senate races, at the height of Justice Saqib Nisar).

So we push ahead: the logical result of the bat symbol ruling should have been that PTI candidates would have to contest the polls under a symbol other than the bat, or, worst-case scenario, individual symbols.

Which would have been penalty enough: in a land where, in the eyes of the voting public, the symbol is the party, the PTI bore a clear handicap. But the election commission, cartoonishly hostile to whichever party is out of the deep state’s favour, went one further: it ruled that no candidate could contest from the PTI platform whatsoever.

In essence, the PTI hadn’t so much as lost its symbol as it had been dissolved overnight. Not only would its members have to contest with baingans, bottles, and bajas as its symbols, they would now have to do so as independents — as if the party didn’t exist.

Trap after trap

As we now know, a historic number of PTI-backed independents made it to Parliament anyway. But even there, the election commission met them with trap after trap — whittling down their numbers as much as possible.

For starters, the PTI’s broken bat fell foul of Rule 94 of the Election Rules — that parties are entitled to reserved seats only if they are allotted a symbol.

Looking for a way out, the 80 PTI indies first thought to join sectional party Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen, which had both symbol and seat. It was hoped the boost in MWM’s numbers would help PTI claim all the reserves it was entitled to.

But for reasons still hazy — rumour has it that PTI conservatives were ill at ease with their new ally’s brand — Imran Khan’s partisans opted out of MWM. Instead, they veered into Sunni Ittehad Council, another sectional party — one that hadn’t contested the election, let alone won a seat.

This blunder opened up a second trap: the law mandates that reserved seats be allotted to parties that actually contest the polls. And since Sunni Ittehad hadn’t contested, the election commission smirked, it was ineligible for reserves.

Not that this was what the commission used to think: it had tossed the Balochistan Awami Party a reserved seat in 2019 after elections were held in the ex-tribal areas, without the party ever having contested them. When confronted, the commission shrugged: if it was wrong then, it was correct now.

And it was also correct, it ruled, to have handed PTI’s reserved seats to the parties that had lost them.

Though Sunni Ittehad would appeal the commission’s ruling, a full bench of the Peshawar High Court upheld it: they were entitled to no reserves.

Try as it might, the independents had run out of options. So they returned to the Isa Court, which had created the crisis in the first place.

‘A cascading series of errors’

Thus began a month of Sunni Ittehad Council vs Election Commission of Pakistan. After eight anguished hearings, the Isa Court announced its decision on July 12, 2024.

On the question of how many reserved seats were bound for PTI, the Court split four ways: 8-2-2-1.

Justices Mandokhail, Isa dissent: 11 seats

Co-signed by Justice Isa — the closest he ever came to recognising the havoc wreaked by his bat verdict — Justice Mandokhail’s dissent repaired only a fraction of the harm.

It did so by cutting the 80 PTI independents in two: the 39 that had declared themselves PTI in their election forms, and the 41 that hadn’t. “We do not agree with … the ECP declaring PTI’s 39 affiliated returned candidates as independents,” the dissent held. “The electorate voted for them in their such [sic] capacity.”

The judges directed that reserved seats be allotted to PTI in proportion to those 39. The remaining 41 stood knocked out, based on the technicality that their forms didn’t say PTI (even as they claimed the party, and the party claimed them).

All said, the dissent halved PTI’s rightful share, and handed the loser parties reserved seats well above their proportion. Per the Isa Court’s formula, the ruling regime would still walk away with a two-thirds majority it never won.

Justices Aminuddin, Afghan dissent: 0 seats

The lowest score came from Justices Aminuddin Khan and Naeem Akhter Afghan, dismissing the petitions.

In their 25-page opinion (of which nearly 17 were consumed by facts and background), the dissenters held that Sunni Ittehad was before the Court, not PTI.

And since Sunni Ittehad hadn’t contested the polls, it deserved no reserved seats. Nor did PTI, which hadn’t asked the court for relief anyway.

The dissent proved extraordinary for two reasons: it didn’t cite a single precedent, and it was the first minority opinion to urge that its own majority be disobeyed.

Justice Yahya dissents: 0–7(?) seats

Like Justices Aminuddin and Afghan, Justice Yahya also dismissed Sunni Ittehad’s petitions outright.

As for the 80 PTI claimants, he directed the election commission to revisit the notifications of a handful of the 39 that had declared themselves PTI in their election forms; specifically, the lucky few that had also provided party certificates.

But unlike Justice Mandokhail’s dissent — which had at least handed over reserved seats to PTI in proportion to those 39 — Justice Yahya kept it narrow: he held that the Court itself could not order any such allocation. To do so “would not be legally appropriate”.

Though he found its behaviour “deeply concerning”, the same election commission was left to decide the future of the assembly.

8-member majority: 22 seats

Authored by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, the majority went furthest in restoring the people’s will. It held the election commission had been wrong to pretend as if the PTI stood dissolved, even if it had lost its symbol.

It also acknowledged the chaos caused by Justice Isa’s bat verdict: issuing it on the same day that party tickets were to be submitted had “contributed in causing confusion and prejudice to PTI, its candidates, and the electorate”.

Nor could such candidates have been forced to run as independents, or been deprived of their reserved seats.

Since the electorate couldn’t be made to suffer for the commission’s unlawful acts, the Court ordered that the 22 reserved seats be returned to PTI “as an obligation of justice”. The Constitution was a covenant, Justice Shah held; one that affirmed “the supreme role of the people in shaping their destiny”.

As to Justices Isa, Mandokhail, and Yahya excluding at least 41 independents, the majority replied: “We are completely at a loss to understand the logic, other than the constraint of the circumstances, as to why a candidate of a national-level political party … would become an independent candidate by his own free will.”

To quote the majority’s Justice Munib Akhtar, a “cascading series of errors” by the commission had forced the party into such a predicament. Whether or not the judge meant it as a reference, that exact expression was first used in relation to a gory plane crash from 1985 — a metaphor for systems breaking down.

And they would break down again: the state would never implement the verdict.

Review reversal

With no small encouragement from Qazi Faez Isa, the election commission refused to budge. Even the 26th amendment was passed — and the judiciary wrecked along with it — without the PTI being returned its reserved seats.

Hence, also, the amendment’s brand-new ‘Constitutional Bench’. Having achieved much of what it was created for — allowing military trials of civilians, as well as executive interference in the appointments of Islamabad High Court judges — the bench was set for a third act: reviewing Sunni Ittehad.

If while going against all principles of review: though the Supreme Court rules mandate that a review bench must be the same as the original, five of the eight majority judges — including its author, Justice Shah — were dropped without explanation.

They were replaced by seven newcomers, most brought in by the unity regime’s court-packing plan, which had inflated the Supreme Court’s 17-judge strength to 34. For context, India has 33 judges, despite a population five times the size.

Then again, policy concerns were hardly on the executive’s mind. “Observers will ask why the authorities are suddenly worried about how many judges there are in the Supreme Court,” a Dawn editorial wondered when the packing was underway. “Does it have something to do with how the bench ruled in the reserved seats case?” Well, yes.

As it turns out, when said court-packing was alleged before the bench, one new judge did recuse himself from the proceedings — but the bench was never reconstituted. For the first time ever, a smaller bench (12 members) would review the decision of a larger bench (13 members).

And in yet another first, that bench itself was headed by its most fervent dissenter: in what seemed to be pure happenstance, the executive had already decided on Justice Aminuddin as head of the Constitutional Bench. (The only judge on the judicial commission to have voted for Justice Aminuddin had been Justice Aminuddin.)

All of which brings us to the end scene: if not obvious already, Sunni Ittehad has been reversed in review. The PTI’s haul of reserved seats has dropped from 22 back to 0; its seats again dished out to the losers. Designed for the underrepresented, they are now tools for overrepresentation.

Not only has Justice Aminuddin’s view prevailed, even the original majority’s judges have swapped sides: Justices Mazhar and Rizvi have decided against Justices Mazhar and Rizvi from last summer, and accepted a review of their own decision. The final tally stands at 10-2.

If there’s a silver lining, it comes from said two: Justices Ayesha and Abbasi, who threw out the review petitions upon arrival. Even amid the judiciary’s continuing debasement, Justice Ayesha has given cause for hope: prior to standing up for the reserved seats verdict, she struck down military trials of civilians and rejected each tier of the bogus Practice and Procedure Act.

And more hope will be required: per Sunni Ittehad’s counsel, “The journey from stealing the general election to stealing the reserved seats is complete”.

Which means more corrosion ahead: the 27th amendment is now on the horizon, its contents still in the dark. Until it is exposed, and it must be, Pakistanis wonder: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Kamran Arif, a name instantly recognisable to anyone in Pakistan’s human rights circles, was more than a colleague; he was a friend, a mentor, and a quiet force of clarity.

At his home, tucked between wall-sized shelves stacked with everything from constitutional theory to crime thrillers, sat a book I once borrowed, and then shamelessly failed to return. ‘May It Please the Court: The First Amendment’ is a collector’s gem, a gripping compilation of real Supreme Court cases and the arguments that once gave weight to America’s promise of free speech. It captures a time when the First Amendment still held meaning in the so-called land of the free, before it was gradually emptied by national security paranoia and rebranded as a talking point to defend corporate power and demagogic bluster.

The book revisits the fierce courtroom battles fought to defend free expression, and upholding the First Amendment, the constitutional safeguard that promises freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and the right to dissent without fear or favour — the very foundations of the ‘American dream’.

Down the slippery slope

I was reading the book again recently, and it felt grimly ironic to recall those legal battles now, at a time when the US — once the loudest champion of free speech — is sliding into a state of quiet authoritarianism. Students are arrested for protesting, ICE stalks immigrants through digital footprints, and speech that challenges power is flagged, monitored, and punished. The very rights once argued for so passionately before the Supreme Court are now, seemingly, selectively applied, if not openly discarded.

In yet another chapter of the post-Trump erosion of civil liberties, the US government has formalised what many feared would become the global template for ideological policing: social media vetting as a precondition for entry.

All F, M, and J visa applicants from Karachi and Lahore, including students, researchers, and exchange scholars, are now required to surrender every social media handle used over the past five years and strip away any privacy settings.

The US Consulates in Karachi and Lahore issued a special advisory for F, M, and J applicants, emphasising that mandatory disclosure of social media identifiers is now part of the core screening process. An Instagram post by the consulates reads: “Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States.

“Omitting social media information on your application could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future US visas,” they warned.

In this latest avatar of surveillance rationalised as policy, online posts are treated like ideological contraband, combed through by consular officials for memes, captions, and hashtags that hint at dissent. It’s a quiet but chilling escalation, where political expression becomes a liability measured not by law, but by algorithms, suspicion, and the shifting whims of empire.

Tightening the screws

In the courtroom transcripts Kamran so cherished, lawyers once stood before the highest court defending the right to burn flags, mock presidents, and speak without fear. Today, those same freedoms, especially when exercised by immigrants or folks of colour, are surveilled, catalogued, and punished in silence. The First Amendment, once a shield against state overreach, now hangs limp in the theatre of selective liberties.

I feel this isn’t just a draconian border policy but a slow, deliberate erosion of the right to dissent and the right to be human online. The First Amendment, long considered the North Star of American civil liberties, seems to have been effectively shelved.

There is little ambiguity about where this began. The Trump administration’s obsession with digital spaces as ideological battlegrounds first gave rise to the idea that visa applicants should be screened for their online views. This idea, originally floated in 2017 as part of Trump’s larger anti-immigration fervour, was then institutionalised under the cloak of counterterrorism. In 2019, the State Department expanded the policy to cover over 15 million people annually. In 2025, the screws are being tightened. What was once a soft screening has now become an explicit demand: unlock your digital self or be denied entry.

According to a Reuters report citing an internal cable, US consular officers have been instructed to carry out “comprehensive and thorough vetting” of all student and exchange visitor applicants, with a specific mandate to identify individuals who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” The cable, dated June 18, was circulated to US missions worldwide just days before the policy was set to take effect.

The message is clear

Who defines hostility? What is considered a threat? Can criticism of American foreign policy constitute subversion? Could satire be seen as offensive, extremist material?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had documented multiple cases during the previous Trump era in which Iranian students, despite holding valid US visas, were detained at airports and summarily deported under vague “national security” justifications, without explanation, legal recourse, or due process. Many had already cleared extensive vetting, only to be flagged at the last mile. This was also the period when visa forms were updated to demand applicants’ social media handles, turning online expression into a minefield of suspicion.

Recently, a Norwegian tourist was denied entry into the US after officials found a meme of Vice President JD Vance on his phone and questioned him about past drug use. Homeland Security cited his admission as grounds, though the incident raises concerns about digital content being used to screen travelers.

But let’s be honest, when even Elon Musk had to scrub his timeline and issue half-hearted apologies to keep the leader of the ‘free’ world calm, what chance does a 22-year-old student from Karachi stand? The message is clear: your digital footprint can follow you across borders, and in the land of filtered freedoms, speech is free only when it flatters power.

This policy fits squarely into the blueprint of what I have previously termed ‘The Outrage Machine’, a political-industrial complex where demagogues are at the helm and social media platforms function as their whips. In this architecture, disagreement is not dialogue; it is treason. If you question, mock, or contradict the orthodoxy online, you are no longer a user. You are the enemy.

This is textbook authoritarian logic, draped in the language of administrative procedure. And it is not being driven by data. A 2021 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found no credible evidence that social media screening has ever prevented a terror attack. On the contrary, it found significant racial and religious bias in how online content was interpreted and weaponised against applicants. The policy punishes not intent, but perception. And perception is deeply racialised.

Nowhere is this felt more acutely than in Pakistan. For young scholars and aspiring students, the US remains a coveted destination. But in 2025, that aspiration comes with a caveat: surrender your digital privacy.

And therein lies the quiet tragedy. The US, long a self-appointed champion of free speech and open society, is now importing the logic of surveillance states. It is hard to distinguish this from the digital authoritarianism practised in authoritarian societies where social media is routinely monitored for dissent. The difference is that the US does it while preaching democratic values.

Only the beginning

There is a strategic hypocrisy at play. The same government that warns against TikTok as a Chinese surveillance tool now demands access to the Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts of Pakistani students. The same administration that rails against digital censorship abroad is building a system to algorithmically screen beliefs at home.

Make no mistake: this policy will not remain confined to visa applicants. Surveillance logic never retreats. It expands. Already, we see private companies using AI to analyse employee social media. Governments across the West may be watching closely. What begins in Washington rarely stays there. What the US is doing in a bid to secure borders might just become a template for digital control.

Digital rights advocates have warned that policies like these do not merely violate privacy; they dismantle the foundation of the open internet. The right to express oneself without fear of retribution, to organise, to criticise power, all these freedoms are under siege when surveillance becomes a condition for movement. The right to privacy is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for liberty.

Universities in the US must not remain silent. If academic freedom is to mean anything, it must include the right of students to think, speak, and post without being labelled a threat. If US campuses become ideological checkpoints, then the moral foundation of their global prestige collapses. This is not a war on terror, but a war on the unfiltered self. The kind of policy that makes students choose between their voice and their future. It is morally indefensible.

To conclude, I can say with near certainty that after authoring this, my future US visa applications are headed straight for the shredder. Tragic, I know. But thankfully, I’m not the sort who lets bureaucratic paranoia ruin my day. That said, if you’re feeling bold enough to share this article on your timeline, just a heads-up, your dreams of sipping overpriced coffee in Brooklyn and posting a selfie from Times Square might suffer a similar fate.

Choose rebellion wisely.

Header image created with generative AI

The recent Iran-Israel direct military confrontation, and the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have sparked a geopolitical rebalancing across the wider Middle East. From Islamabad to Ankara, capitals across West Asia are urgently rethinking their strategies after the dramatic events of the past two weeks. Every actor with a stake in the region’s decades-long conflicts is now re-evaluating its position and seeking to understand where the major powers and other regional countries stand. Most crucially, the lessons that Tehran and Tel Aviv draw from this showdown will shape the emerging power dynamics across the region.

From Tehran to Tel Aviv — major takeaways

The 12-day war catapulted the simmering covert and proxy battles between the two sides into a direct war of attrition, the first for Iran since the Iran-Iraq War. For three decades, the Islamic Republic had relied on various militias in its protracted conflict with both Israel and the US. But as the war came home — with direct Israeli attacks and targeted US strikes on Iran’s prized nuclear facilities — the absence of a capable air force able to defend Iran’s skies became evident.

Although this may be an outcome of decades-long sanctions that have constrained Iran’s military procurements, the fact that the Iranian air force did not engage Israeli fighter jets when they entered its airspace has significant implications for the post-ceasefire rebuilding of its nuclear enterprise. Tehran will have to factor in Israel’s air superiority as it seeks ways to regain control of its skies.

Politically, Iran now faces its most existential question: should it seek a nuclear shield to ensure the security of the regime?

For nearly three decades, Iranian leaders have toyed with the notion of ‘nuclear latency’ or ‘nuclear threshold’ — that is, putting in place the building blocks of a nuclear capability that would enable them to sprint toward a nuclear weapon whenever a political decision is made. US and Israeli strikes have sought to neutralise one of the bomb pathways — uranium enrichment — in which Iran has invested over the past decade. The extent of the setbacks to Iranian nuclear facilities is not yet known.

Conversely, for Tel Aviv, the shifting political goalposts posed a challenge to its military strategy. Moving from merely disrupting Iran’s nuclear pursuits to seeking regime change limited the Israeli military’s ability to achieve its objectives solely through air power and by sowing discord within Iran’s decision-making structures. This shift also unnerved the Gulf neighbours of both Iran and Israel, as it revived memories of the 2003 Iraq war.

Yet, as the aggressor, Israel could not unilaterally strike the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant and had to rely on Washington to carry out the attack. This dependency grants the Trump administration political leverage over Israel as it seeks to enforce the Israel-Iran ceasefire, and especially, ensure Israel’s compliance.

Beyond this, Israel now views itself as the predominant military hegemon across the Middle East; a perception that could spark unease in other regional capitals wary of a risk-taking Israel, potentially triggering inter-state wars rather than just conflicts with militant groups.

Nervous Gulf

During the 12-day war, the most anxious leaders were in the Gulf region. For decades, the Gulf states had relied on the American security umbrella and their political influence in Washington to advance their political and security interests. During this time, both the Gulf states and Israel perceived a common threat from Iran’s regional ambitions.

Yet, in recent years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had found ways to stabilise ties with Iran and pursue coexistence. That delicate balance has now been disturbed by the war, as the Gulf faces a new threat: Iran’s warnings of attacks on US bases across the region.

Post-ceasefire, the Gulf now faces several daunting scenarios:

• Preparing for a nuclear-armed Iran
• Coexisting with a weakened regime in Tehran that may seek to reassert its position, sparking further instability
• Bracing for the next war, as Israel’s risk-acceptance threshold has increased
• Pursuing geopolitical balancing by deepening engagements with Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing

During the war, Israel’s ambition of regime change unnerved Gulf leaders. As much as the Gulf states oppose a nuclear-armed Iran, it is the possibility of a civil conflict that puts regional leaders on edge. How can a stable political transition be achieved in a country with nearly half a million trained soldiers, where any power vacuum could result in a bloody civil war? Would Israeli or American forces actually commit to fighting on the ground to support opposition groups? And if civil unrest erupts, how can Iran’s stockpile of nuclear materials and technology be effectively secured?

Gulf countries, and Iran’s other neighbours, dread the prospect of prolonged internal unrest in Iran, as it could embolden centrifugal forces across the region. Moreover, political instability in Iran would likely lead to an exodus of people toward the Gulf and Europe, while triggering a new wave of militant violence.

The great powers: Limits of influence?

For the great powers — the US, Russia and China — the evolving geopolitics of the Middle East is crucial for their global strategies. For the US, which is both an actor in the current conflict and an external power influencing regional dynamics, the key challenge is to avoid new entanglement in the Middle East.

Washington’s primary strategic focus remains the Indo-Pacific, and a prolonged conflict in the Middle East would only serve as an unwelcome distraction. For now, the United States’ main interest lies in maintaining a weakened, non-nuclear Iran, which would allow its Gulf partners to deepen their ties with Israel. Both Washington broadly, and the Trump administration specifically, have backed a Middle East shaped by the Abraham Accords — promoting normalisation between Israel and key Arab states, while largely sidestepping the divisive issue of Palestine.

This vision of peace is intended to enable Washington’s Gulf security partners, working in coordination with Israel, to take greater responsibility for regional security. In turn, this would allow the United States to reallocate military resources to the Asia-Pacific, where it is increasingly focused on countering China. However, Washington believes that a nuclear-capable Iran would inevitably undermine this regional order.

Conversely, for Russia and China — whose absence from the current war was striking — the situation posed a strategic paradox. On the one hand, a distracted United States mired in Middle Eastern conflicts benefits both Beijing and Moscow; on the other, it comes at the cost of weakening their key regional partner, Iran.

For different reasons, both powers chose to remain on the sidelines — Russia is bogged down by the war in Ukraine, while China, focused on maintaining economic stability amid an intensifying trade war with the US, has little appetite for external entanglements. As a result, neither provided Tehran with concrete military support nor acted to dissuade Washington from targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yet, both great powers cannot allow Israel to dominate the Middle East in ways that would entrench a US-led regional order at the expense of their own influence. Post ceasefire, China and Russia are likely to prioritise stabilising Iran and gradually rebuilding its economy and military capabilities, so it can better defend itself in the future. The more pressing question is: will Beijing and Moscow support Tehran’s nuclear quest, if the latter decides to sprint towards a nuclear breakout?

Immediately, however, a prospective ceasefire in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, again brokered by the US, will calm regional tensions across the Middle East. If it materialises, it indicates that the Iran-Israel ceasefire will also hold, providing considerable room for direct US-Iran talks on nuclear and regional issues. Similarly, the Gaza ceasefire will provide a window for a regional initiative to shape the future of governance and security in Gaza, with active support from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Any tangible progress on Gaza will build momentum towards Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords, and in the process, effectively reshape the regional order.

For now, the many ‘unknown unknowns’ surrounding the current geopolitical conundrum in the Middle East make it a volatile flashpoint. But as the belligerents, regional nations, and great powers evaluate the war’s outcomes, the nuclear aspirants around the world are drawing a stark lesson: nuclear weapons remain the ultimate guarantor of state security.

Header image: Smoke and a ball of fire rise above buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, during an Israeli air strike, on May 12. — AFP

It was 3:30am in Khokhar Mohalla, one of Hyderabad’s oldest neighbourhoods, when streams of women clad in black crossed security barriers on July 4. Some carried sleepy toddlers in their arms; others held the hands of young boys or walked alongside their husbands. Men and children also mingled in the growing crowd.

They had come together for the cherished ritual of mannat at an Imambargah set in a modest house dating back to 1876. The passageway leading to the entrance was already packed with scores of women. “I couldn’t get in, but my son has gone inside,” said a young woman anxiously.

Moments later, her son, Danyal, returned. “I saw the ziarat. Let’s go now,” he told his mother, who had brought him all the way from their home in Qasimabad to seek blessings. “We’re not Shia Muslims — we’re Maulaee,” she clarified with quiet pride, using a term that reflects deep devotion to the fourth caliph of Islam and his family, who were martyred in Karbala in 63 Hijri.

The sea of women had gathered to perform the ritual of the mehndi of Shahzada Qasim, the son of Hazrat Imam Hassan (RA). Dozens of police officers had cordoned off the area, erecting barricades that brought the usual flow of traffic to a halt.

At this historic Imambargah, the mehndi is a women-led tradition. Inside, men and women alike lit candles, holding it on their palms as they whispered prayers for their wishes to be fulfilled. Many women brought adorned replicas of cradles into the house — symbols of gratitude that their prayers for a child had been answered.

“My wife has come here today,” said Sumair, cradling his baby girl in his arms. “She prayed here last year that I find a job,” he continued. “This year, I was appointed in the police, and so she has returned to offer thanks and pay her respect.”

Another young man stood clutching a flickering candle. “I want to marry, but my marriage keeps getting delayed,” said Awais.

The more one lingers among these devoted visitors, the more stories like his emerge — each a window into hearts burdened with worries and brimming with faith.

Gul Shah ki mehndi

Draped in black attire, which symbolises mourning for the martyrs of Karbala, Apa Kulsoom, sat quietly inside the Imambargah Gul Shah Bukhari, established in 1876. She is the custodian of the place which overflows with striking symbols of devotion: tiny cradles, decorated sehra, platters of sweets, replicas of alams, and henna. This ceremony, held every Muharram 7, is commonly known as Gul Shah ki Mehndi, a tradition that continues to draw the faithful year after year.

These items will be taken to Qadam Gah Maula Ali at Fajr on Muharram 8, when mourners from the pir that originates in Tando Mir Mahmood — one of Hyderabad’s oldest localities — arrive at Apa’s Imambargah. This pir, known as Jamaytan jo pir, has been carried out by Anjuman Safina-i-Hussaini since 1909.

The term pir, rooted in the Sindhi language, refers to the sacred ground or designated space for azadari — mourning rituals — or the very site where an alam rises skyward, bringing together people to honour the memory of Karbala.

As the ritual unfolds, women and young girls recite eulogies, recalling the martyrdom of Imam Hussain — the beloved grandson of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and son of Hazrat Ali (AS) — who, along with 72 of his loyal companions, was slain on the plains of Karbala, Iraq. Among the symbols of grief and reverence are small cradles, representing Ali Asghar, Imam Hussain’s youngest son and one of the youngest martyrs of Karbala.

Salamat Feroz is a poet who composed a tune for Shahzada Qasim’s mehndi ritual, which was recited by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan in 2022. This year, he produced Sajjad AS ki manzil bhari hai, in memory of Hazrat Sajjad, once again brought to life through Rahat’s stirring voice.

Reflecting on the significance of these rituals, Feroz explained, “The faithful perform the mehndi ceremony as an expression of their deep love for the Ahl-e-Bait. We all know Hazrat Qasim’s wedding never happened in Karbala — but it is precisely this unfulfilled hope that inspires people to continue this ritual today, keeping his memory alive.”

Historically, Hyderabad served as the capital of Sindh for many years, until the British conquest led by Charles Napier in 1843 wrested it from the Talpur dynasty. The British forces toppled the Talpur rulers and exiled them to Calcutta.

Hyderabad, named in honour of Islam’s fourth caliph, is renowned for its rich Muharram traditions, which set it apart from other cities — from its alams and pirs to centuries-old Imambargahs. One of its most unique observances is the mehndi ritual held annually on Muharram 7, a ceremony steeped in reverence.

At the heart of these traditions stands Qadam Gah Maula Ali which embodies Hyderabad’s spiritual identity. This expansive landmark, which includes a mosque, is primarily known as ‘ziarat’, drawing visitors from across Pakistan and beyond.

Alam — a symbol of valour

Pirs and alams are powerful legacies from the Talpur era that shape Hyderabad’s identity even today. During Muharram, they become especially visible, adding a unique character to the city.

Alams are tall wooden structures raised at famous Imambargahs like Qadam Gah, as well as in many homes. The alam denotes a flag, typically carried by military leadesr in battles fought by Muslims during the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) era.

In Karbala, explained Salamat Feroz, Imam Hussain (AS) handed over this flag or alam to his step brother, Hazrat Abbas (RA), which is why he is known as Abbas Alamdar [flag bearer]. During the battle, Hazrat Abbas (RA) demonstrated exceptional valour and skills while fighting Yazid’s forces to fetch water for the Imam’s children and holding the alam as well. “He held the alam on his body somehow even after losing both of his arms,” said Feroz.

“So, these alams are seen today on the rooftops of houses and imambargahs in memory of Abbas Alamdar,” he added.

The structure of any tall alam rests on an iron frame prepared by caretakers, who perform various tasks to ensure its stability before it is finally raised. When the time comes, men — young and old — gather in fervent devotion, their chants of “Labbaik ya Hussain!” echoing through the air, as they pull the structure with synchronised strength, carefully maneuvering it to stand upright at a precise 90-degree angle.

In the days leading up to Muharram, these alams are respectfully lowered for cleaning and essential refurbishment, before they are raised on or before Muharram 1 amid recitation of nohas. This process, known as nahar, typically begins after Eidul Azha. “Nahar means lowering the alams for beautification, fresh coats of colour, new decorations, or the addition of artistic elements,” explained Salamat.

Some of these alams are incredibly tall. One of the tallest alams — 82ft long — is fixed at Imambargah Anjuman Safina-i-Hussaini. A few years ago, Nisar Bhatti, a carpenter, shared that he crafted two alams of 93ft and 82ft for the Imambargahs of Tando Agha and Aliabad, dating back to 1963.

Another celebrated alam stands in the Wadhan jo Pir area, famously known as Jhandi Wadhu jo Pir. It has intricately carved peacock motifs, exemplifying a decorative trend that has now become common.

All famous alams are raised upon the sighting of the Muharram moon, as the ritual dictates. Large crowds gather at every Imambargah to witness their raising. The historic Qadam Gah Maula Ali consistently attracts an impressive turnout during this ceremony. As the massive structures begin to rise, colourful bulbs and decorative lights attached to them burst into brilliance. Considering their massive size, crane-like machines are often used to raise them.

Maintaining or, in some cases, replacing these alams can be a demanding task, reserved for craftsmen who possess the necessary dexterity and experience. This specialised work has its own jargon among those who perform it, passed down through generations. Typically, an alam is fixed into a beautifully ornate, onion-shaped concrete structure called a dikki, which serves both as a foundation and as a work of art. Decorative items such as carved images of pigeons, peacocks, and flower petals embellish the wooden elements of the alam, making the entire display visually captivating for onlookers.

Then there is a circular wooden structure used in the alam, known as the chauk, which is connected to a wooden piece called the dilli in the alam-making jargon. The dilli holds the shama daan. Finally, the kals — made of pipe or wood — carries a human palm, symbolising Hazrat Ghazi Abbas (RA), who was martyred on the 8th of Muharram during the battle of Karbala.

“I believe Qadam Gah’s history dates back to around 1810, and so does its alam’s,” said Kazim Mirza, one of the longest serving custodians of Qadam Gah. “There is an old sketch made by a foreigner in which an alam can be seen at the facade of the Fort (now Pucca Qilla). That very alam was fixed in Qadam Gah during the Talpur era,” he added.

Qadam Gah is located off Station Road and has recently undergone refurbishment with Iranian-style architecture. The building’s facade resembles the mausoleum of Hazrat Ali in Najaf Ashraf. A prayer mat made of stone is also kept there.

The prayer mat bears the imprints of Hazrat Ali’s forehead, hands, knees, and feet in the position of prostration. “This stone prayer mat was gifted by Iran’s ruler, Fatah Shah Kachar, to Mir Karam Ali Talpur, the then ruler of Sindh,” said Mirza. Kazim belongs to the Mirza family, whose ancestors migrated from Georgia and settled in Sindh in the early 19th century.

Shehnai tunes stir devotion

No pir is considered complete without the use of the shehnai, a small wooden musical instrument. Different tunes played on the shehnai express the sorrow, grief, and pain endured by Imam Hussain and his 72 companions. These tunes mark the mersias and nohas (elegies).

On Muharram, the Jamaityan jo Pir is taken out from the Imambargah, and the procession begins with the arrival of mourners. Its first big stopover is at Faqir ka Pir, where devotees from Hyderabad and beyond gather in large numbers. This pir is among the most significant highlights of Hyderabad’s Muharram commemorations. Throughout the journey, which lasts nearly 30 hours, the mourners make several stops at various locations. The procession concludes on Muharram 8 back at the same Imambargah. Over two dozen zuljanahs (horses) are a part of this.

According to Dr Imam Ali Mirza, who completed his PhD on Sindhi mersias, “The shehnai travelled from Iran to India and then to Sindh. It is also called nafeer in Persian.” He points out that there is evidence suggesting that, like the naqara, the nafeer was used in Karbala.

“Talpur rulers actively promoted azadari in various ways. Even after their release from Calcutta, they continued to donate money among the people for purposes of nazar-o-niaz,” said Mirza. He further explained that when the Urdu-speaking community migrated from India to Pakistan’s Hyderabad, they introduced their own cultural traditions of Muharram observance. “Their azadari practices remain distinct from those of the local community,” said Imam Mirza, author of Sindh aur Ahl-e-Bait and Sindh ki Azadari.

Kazim endorsed Imam’s view, saying that ashara-e-majalis were uncommon in Sindh before Partition. “Our elders used to organise majalis in different areas during Muharram, but after these communities migrated from India, they started holding 10-day majalis at a single location — a tradition that continues to this day at places like Qadam Gah or Mehfil-e-Hussaini,” said Kazim. He noted that while Allama Samar Zaidi from Lucknow had been visiting Tando Thoro in Hyderabad earlier, it was after migration that these 10-day majalis became an integral part of Muharram here.

Hyderabad’s central Ashura procession is organised under the aegis of Anjuman-e-Hyderi, established in 1948. The Anjuman is currently headed by Nawaz Bhutto and Raza Irani. The procession starts from Qadam Gah and takes place at Karbala Dadan Shah.

Meanwhile, 10-day majalis are held on Station Road under the patronage of the Asna-Ashari Khoja community, who migrated from India. Their organisation was founded in a small location in Resham Gali in 1948 and has operated from a three-floor building off Station Road since 1967.

Over centuries, these rituals and traditions have been passed down generations, ensuring that the spirit of sacrifice and valour displayed in Karbala remains etched in the minds of Hyderabad’s residents.

Header image: A shabeeh or replica of the cradle of Imam Ali Asghar, one of the martyrs of Karbala during a pir on Muharram 7.

Every summer, Karachi faces a predictable water crisis. As temperatures climb, neighbourhoods across the city brace for dwindling water pressure, erratic supply schedules, and increased dependence on costly private tankers. The city’s water utility, Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC), insists the primary problem is a stark mismatch between the city’s water supply — approximately 550-650 million gallons a day — and its ballooning demand, assumed to be double that, around 1,200 MGD.

New projects to increase the city’s water supply are thus championed as the silver bullet to the city’s perennial water crisis. Chief among these is the K-IV bulk water supply scheme, a mega-project to double the city’s water supply launched nearly two decades ago that has yet to be completed. Despite repeated delays and cost overruns, the project remains the centrepiece of the city’s water planning strategy.

But the water demand estimates used to justify the massive infrastructure deserve closer scrutiny. Our research group conducted over 600 household surveys and installed several smart water meters (the first scientific study conducted at this scale in Pakistan) to find that actual household water use is far below official estimates. In some cases, less than half of what is assumed.

If Karachi builds its infrastructure on exaggerated and unsubstantiated estimates, it risks repeating Pakistan’s costly mistakes from the power sector, where inflated demand estimates led to massive overspending and a glut of unused electricity that ordinary citizens are still paying for through soaring electricity bills.

The problem with the numbers

This is the rather simplistic way the KWSC estimates how much water is needed for Karachi: the population of Karachi multiplied by per-person daily water consumption.

The body assumes that each resident of Karachi’s estimated 22 million population uses 54 gallons or 204 litres per day, resulting in a demand estimate of around 1,200 million gallons per day (54 gallons per day * 22 million people).

However, the estimate for the per-person water consumption (54 gallons per day) is not based on any recent, empirical study for Karachi. In fact, residential connections across the city are unmetered, and no peer-reviewed analysis of actual household water use had ever been conducted until recently. So, because they don’t have any data, the KWSC relies on guesswork.

This isn’t a new problem. Since the 1980s, various studies and government reports have projected dramatically inflated water needs for Karachi. In 1985, a planning study forecasted that water demand would rise to 81 gallons per capita per day (gpcd) by 2025. Another estimate in 1999 projected the city’s total demand to reach nearly 1,340 MGD by 2010. These numbers were never grounded in direct measurement. Instead, they reflected an overly optimistic vision of urban development, with assumptions based on Western-style household consumption and full appliance access, which simply does not reflect how most people in Karachi use water.

These overestimations shape billion-rupee investment decisions. They justify large-scale infrastructure projects and continued borrowing, even when actual consumption may not warrant it. Misjudging demand risks funnelling scarce public resources into costly supply augmentation projects, when more targeted, cost-effective interventions could achieve greater impact.

The second major flaw in Karachi’s water demand projections is the assumption that all residents use water in the same way, regardless of season, income, or neighbourhood. The KWSC’s estimate — 54 gallons per capita per day — is applied uniformly across its entire population, as if every single person in Karachi needs the same amount of water every day. In reality, household water use varies widely across the city and changes substantially over the course of the year.

Our studies, one employing water use questionnaires and the other using high-resolution smart meters, both show that actual usage varies dramatically across different households and seasons. Water use tends to rise during hotter months, particularly when daily temperatures exceed 31 degrees Celsius, and declines in the winter. Wealthier households consistently use more water than poorer ones. Even within a single household, usage fluctuates across the week.

Therefore, treating water demand as a single number flattens all this complexity.

What the evidence suggests

The limits of Karachi’s demand projections become even clearer when we look closely at how water is used in low-income neighbourhoods. In Lyari, a township marked by dense housing, poor infrastructure, and limited piped supply, we surveyed over 600 households across the summer and winter seasons to understand how much water people use. Most households in the neighbourhood rely on a mix of unreliable piped supply, private vendors, and storage tanks.

Across our sample, the average daily use was just 16 gpcd in the summer and 13 gpcd in the winter — less than a third of what is assumed by the KWSC. Clearly, looking at just the current water usage underestimates the true water demand. That is, if more water were available, households would use more. We also test this hypothesis in our work and find that for the subsample of households who reported satisfaction with their water access, usage increases to 23 gpcd and 14 gpcd in the summer and winter months, respectively. These numbers suggest that even when water is fully available, actual demand remains far below official estimates.

The findings also reveal stark differences. Not every household is the same. Richer households in one area can invest in infrastructure, secure informal connections, or organise collectively to bring in tankers. Poorer families, in contrast, pay more per unit of water, endure longer wait times, and face greater exposure to unsafe sources.

By portraying Karachi’s water crisis as a system-wide shortfall, the KWSC shifts attention away from its failings in distribution, leakage control, and service reliability. The story of an overwhelming supply-demand gap becomes a convenient excuse, obscuring the fact that many residents are left underserved, not because there isn’t enough water, but because water is mismanaged and unfairly allocated. Solving Karachi’s water crisis will require more than new pipelines — it will require a fundamental shift in how we understand who needs water, how much, and at what cost.

While household surveys help establish broad patterns of water use, they are limited by recall bias and self-reporting. They also represent primarily low-income households. To develop a more robust and holistic picture of water usage in the city, we developed and deployed a low-cost, resilient smart metering system in middle to high-income households across Karachi. These devices recorded actual water flow every 30 seconds, providing millions of data points across 17 months in 23 households. This is the first study of its kind to generate daily-scale water use data in a South Asian city facing intermittent supply.

The findings further undermine the case for uniform, inflated demand projections. We observed significant variation in daily water use both across and within households. Only two out of the 23 households had average water use higher than 54 gpcd. Overall, the average across the entire sample was just 22 gpcd, less than half of the figure used by the KWSC.

The usage also fluctuated with temperature. Once daily highs crossed 31 degrees Celsius, household water use rose sharply, indicating heat-related behavioural changes. Fridays also stood out, with a clear bump in water use likely tied to religious practices. But even during the hottest days or highest-use periods, few households approached the levels that the utility uses in its citywide projections.

The sample size of the smart water meters study is not large enough for us to definitively establish Karachi’s true water demand. However, even with the current sample, we have enough statistical power to show that household usage is far lower than the KWSC’s assumptions and varies considerably across seasons and households.

A more holistic accounting of the city’s water needs must survey more households and incorporate commercial and industrial consumption. It is the KWSC’s responsibility to gather this evidence before making multi-billion-rupee infrastructure commitments.

The corporation, like other utilities in the region, estimates total citywide demand by taking residential usage and adding a fixed percentage for system losses and industrial use. But this approach assumes all components grow at the same pace and ignores underlying structural changes. For example, Karachi’s industrial landscape is evolving. Global economic shifts and changing water-use technologies may reduce industrial consumption even as population growth increases residential demand. Yet these trends are not accounted for in the fixed-percentage planning model. Without better data, the city is flying blind.

Moreover, the assumed per capita use in Karachi, 54 gpcd, is higher than what is reported for many cities. In Shiraz, Iran, it is 35 gpcd; in Mumbai, the utility plans for 39 gpcd. Karachi’s assumptions are not just wrong, they are also outliers compared to other cities. If actual usage is lower and more varied than assumed, the projected supply-demand gap narrows significantly. The case for large-scale supply augmentation, such as the K-IV, begins to look far less certain. Its projected cost has ballooned from Rs25 billion to more than Rs190 billion, yet the project remains incomplete.

More concerning than the delays and overruns, however, is the way the K-IV has come to dominate the city’s water planning agenda. It has drawn political attention and institutional focus away from more immediate and manageable reforms like improved billing or equitable distribution. This is the risk with mega-projects: they become both a symbol and a distraction, offering the illusion of progress while sidelining practical solutions.

Refocusing the water agenda

Karachi does face real water shortages, and new supply investments may well be necessary given the impact of climate change. But the case for costly supply augmentation must be grounded in evidence. Additionally, for any water supply project, two important questions must be addressed. First, who will benefit from this new water? Will it go to neighbourhoods that are currently underserved, or will it reinforce existing inequalities? Second, how much will the people of Karachi pay for these projects, and for how long?

The city urgently needs investment, but not only in pipes and pumps. Allocating water more equally across the city and pricing reforms would likely deliver a greater impact on people’s well-being, and crucially, do not need billions of rupees to carry out. These are management challenges, not capacity ones. Prioritising them could improve outcomes for the majority of Karachi’s residents without locking the city into unsustainable capital projects. There are indications that the recently revamped KWSC has started addressing some of these issues.

Clearly, Karachi’s water crisis is not just about scarcity. For too long, decisions have been based on unsubstantiated assumptions and misplaced priorities. Karachi can either recalibrate its water management strategy based on accurate, data-driven realities, or it can continue down a financially unsustainable path of infrastructure expansion built on misleading assumptions.

The choice the city makes today will determine whether billions of rupees are wisely invested or recklessly wasted.

Header Image: The image is generated via generative AI

This article is the second of a four-part series on Karachi’s water issues.

There was once a time when the sound of the Swat River — gushing waters in some places, flapping waves in others — echoed across the mountainous valley. For visitors and locals alike, it was a melody that soothed the darkest of nights and harshest of days. That was years ago. Today, the river stands still and quiet under the weight of those who died in it.

On June 27, a family of 13 tourists from Sialkot drowned in the flooded Swat River. With feet soaked in the cool water, they were having breakfast on the riverbank near Mingora. Unbeknownst to them, the water level was swiftly rising, and within minutes, they found themselves stranded on a mound of sand in the middle of the river.

They stood there, waiting for help to arrive. But by the time it came, the family was swept away by the floodwaters, one by one. The deceased included seven-year-old Ayan; Rubina, 45; Ajwa, 18; Sharmeen, 16; Murab, 18; and Tazmeen, 20; from Sialkot. “They all left the house excited for a vacation, but came back home in white shrouds,” a relative mourned.

Even Swat mourns. “We are ashamed,” said Fazal Wadood, a resident and member of the village defence committee.

The deaths, a video of which went viral on social media, spurred a conversation on social media — about the inefficiency of the local government, the delay in arrival of rescue services and more. But one important factor attributed to the rise in such incidents, as highlighted by locals time and again, remains missing from the discourse: unchecked gravel and sand mining on the bed of the Swat River.

“It has turned our beautiful river into khandarat (ruins),” rued Wadood. “The water used to be our everything … pride, home, livelihood … but it has been reduced to a disaster now.”

The billion-rupee industry

The Swat River is known to be perfect for mining, given its topography. The river flows in the middle of the mountains, making it abundant in gravel and sand, which is a key component of the construction industry. It is a common practice, not just in Pakistan but across the world.

According to activist and academic Dr Rafiullah, the mining process involves digging ditches in the river, approximately 15-20ft deep and 10-15ft wide, and letting the water fill them. When sand and gravel flow down with the water, it accumulates in these ditches, which are then extracted by changing the direction of the river and are subsequently transported to crush plants.

The mining is usually done during the winter months when the flow of the river is slow, while the extraction takes place during summer.

Over the last decade, the mining industry in Swat has seen a boom, with around 350 crush plants established along the path of the 240km-long river, from Kalam to downstream Kanju. Sand is expensive in Swat with a market value of Rs7,000 per daina — a vehicle used to transport the same — while gravel is sold for Rs3,000, making mining a lucrative business.

“The problem is that such ditches have been dug up everywhere, which has turned the river into a well,” Dr Rafiullah told Dawn.com. “Earlier, there was a set route of the river, and so locals were aware where it was deep and where it wasn’t. But when it was dug up, people could no longer tell this because while on the surface, the water remains still, no one knows what is happening underneath.”

Over the past several years, he continued, the people of Swat have lifted their children in coffins. “They were young boys who went to the river for swimming and bathing.” One of them was Wadood’s 17-year-old nephew, whose body was found in a ditch in the town of Aligrama eight days after he had drowned.

Dr Rafiullah said that the incident of June 27 was also to be blamed on this unrestrained mining. “The miner had constructed a protective dyke to divert the water flow just 300-400 meters from where the family was seated, but it broke down due to flashfloods and heavy rain, increasing the water levels.”

“Within minutes, the family found itself stranded in the middle of the river … the mound of sand they stood on was artificial, a result of mining. By the time anyone understood what happened, it was too late,” he regretted.

Even the investigation report prepared following the incident, seen by Dawn.com, highlighted that water from the Swat River was diverted due to construction work, which allowed the tourists to venture into the river, believing that the water level was low. Subsequently, the chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa issued orders to ban all kinds of mining.

The rights and wrongs of mining

In Swat, mining falls under the Directorate General of Mines and Minerals KP. The department has divided the river into multiple sectors, and under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa River Protection Act 2017 and Mining of Minor Minerals from River Bed Rules 2022, it issues a yearly lease to local contractors.

“A district-level committee identifies blocks for mining through site visits and then forwards them to a district auction committee, which then reserves or fixes the prices to each block and issues advertisements,” explained Ashfaq Ahmed Saleem, the additional director general of the minerals department.

Subsequently, an open auction is held, and the highest bidder is allotted the lease, which includes all the rules and regulations for mining. “Currently, 24 plants are functioning on the Swat River, of which six have been auctioned against a total bid of Rs47 million,” Saleem told Dawn.com.

“Apart from these six blocks, any activity on other blocks is illegal,” he said, adding that monthly checks were conducted to ensure compliance with the mining rules.

But locals say violations are common and lament the administration’s inaction to stop them. For one, the mining rules say that “the lease shall neither divert the natural course of the river, nullah, stream […] nor obstruct the natural flow or water”, but reshaping the river’s route is a common practice in Swat.

It further says that the mining should be restricted to a maximum depth of three metres, and the distance from the riverbanks should be one-fourth of the river, and should be no less than 7.5 metres. “What happened here, though, was that they dug up the entire river from one side to the other with trenches as deep as 20-30ft,” Swat-based journalist Sohail Asghar Khan pointed out.

And this, he added, was the major reason behind rising river-related deaths in the region. “If you go towards the Khwazakhela side, you will see 15-20 excavation machines along the riverbed … and this is the case across the valley now.”

When asked about these practices, Saleem said contractors violating the laws were issued notices and, in the absence of rectification, the lease was cancelled.

“As far as mining on unauthorised blocks is concerned, when we catch it, we file a complaint with the police and then a case is sent to the judicial magistrate,” he added.

According to data shared by Saleem, over 830 first information reports have been registered against illegal mining activity since 2018. In 2024-25 alone, 92 FIRs were lodged, of which 21 cases are under trial, while fines were imposed on others. Per mining rules, the punishment for illegal mining amounts to Rs0.5 to Rs2 million and up to three years in jail.

Who is to blame?

For his part, Rehmat Ali, the chairman of the Malakand Crush Association, told Dawn.com that the right way of mining involved using river channels instead of blocking the river or rerouting it as mentioned in the rules and regulations.

“The lessee shall neither divert the natural course of the river, nullah, stream nor obstruct the natural flow of water,” it states.

But, Ali lamented, some people were mining via illegal means. “They are not just harming the river but also us, who are doing this the right way,” he rued. According to him, there were about 67,000 families in Swat that were dependent on mining for their livelihoods.

“We have been doing this legally since 2003. We have licenses from the Environmental Protection Agency and all the other relevant departments,” Ali told Dawn.com. “But those who are doing this illegally are putting the economy of Swat at risk.”

He explained that Swat heavily relied on tourism, which meant the construction industry played a key role in the region, and crush was primarily used for the same, along with roads and bridges. “But when we complain to the government, they fail to take any notice.”

Following the drowning incident, the government last week cancelled all the lease agreements for mining in the Swat River and imposed Section 144. However, despite the ban, locals said mining was carried out at places where the administration was nowhere to be seen.

“In fact, just the day after the tourist family was washed away in the floods, these miners were back on the river banks with their excavators,” Wadood said.

Environmental catastrophe

This unregulated mining is not just claiming human lives but also causing irreversible degradation to the ecosystem of the Swat River and its pristine clear waters. “These waters used to be a lullaby for us, but today, all we can hear is the roar of the excavators and the scraping and crunching of the earth they dig,” said Wadood.

The intensified extraction has rapidly and visibly changed the natural course of the river, triggering a host of environmental challenges such as the degradation of agricultural land, erosion, and the destruction of Swat’s flora and fauna.

“Agricultural land downstream, mostly fields of onion and tomato crops are drying up,” said Sadique Akbar, former professor at the University of Engineering and Technology, Swabi. He told Dawn.com that local farmers, who rely on the Swat River for irrigation, complain that their lands have become less fertile and more prone to flooding and erosion.

The river’s water, once a home to nearly 17 fish species native to Swat, now fails to provide them with the sustenance required and has thus caused them to go extinct. This is not just affecting the livelihood of fishermen, but also diminishing Swat’s appeal to tourists flocking to the region.

“These fish used to find their food hidden in the riverbed, but extensive mining means it is no longer there,” said Dr Rafiullah. “Trout, which was once the saugat (gift) of Swat, is no longer found in freshwater anymore. Whatever is there is farm-produced. Desi trout can now only be found upstream in Kalam or Bahrain, where the water is clean.”

This has taken the livelihoods of fishermen in the region, who are now forced to search for other alternatives. Initially, they could catch up to 6kg-7kg of fish, but now, even if they spend an entire day, they can hardly manage a catch, added Sohail Asghar.

Moreover, the lush green trees that once surrounded the river have now completely vanished. Residents say miners cut them down to create roads that could take their excavators and other big machines to the riverbanks. In addition, miners usually collect sand along the banks of the river, which has taken away its beauty. This, despite the mining rules, which state: “after mining of minor minerals, the debris and hindrance shall be removed from the limits of the river or stream.”

Similarly, seasonal birds that would have stopped by the river earlier for food have now stopped coming there.

Sufyan, a resident of Karachi who recently visited the northern areas, described it in these words: “The Swat I saw in pictures is no longer there; instead, a cloud of dust, the buzzing of machines and trucks are everywhere. It is just sad,” he said.

And then, there is this constant fear among the residents of losing their children. Swat does not have many options when it comes to recreational activities for locals; they were dependent on the river for that too — swimming, sitting on the banks, and fishing. But none of that is possible anymore. The river they once called theirs has become a stranger today; nothing about it is the same anymore. Only memories remain.

And so, the question echoes louder than the lost melody of the Swat River: will anything change before more lives and memories are washed away?

Header image: Men sift sand alongside the Swat River. — AN Photo

Every morning, as the sun rises over the dust-swept hills of Achanak Bazar in Balochistan’s Dasht tehsil, Shareefa wraps herself in a chaddar, gathers her four children, and begins the long walk to school. There are no schoolbags slung over their shoulders, no uniforms, no books — it is not the children who will sit in class, but their mother.

The journey starts from a mud-walled house in one of the area’s scattered villages, situated approximately 40 minutes from Turbat city. Inside a small classroom at one of Dasht’s last standing primary schools, Shareefa takes her place on the bench.

Her children roam freely in the schoolyard, tumbling over one another in games that sometimes erupt into fights. When one of them cries, she rises quietly, calms the chaos, and returns to her seat. The chalkboard has already moved on to the next math question. The teacher never questions the interruptions; she never needs to.

When Shareefa first arrived to enrol, she was clutching the hand of her youngest child, and carrying eight years of silence. She had dropped out after the fifth grade, not for lack of will, but because there was no schooling beyond that in her village. Girls like Shareefa, who could not afford to move to Turbat, stayed behind. Early marriage followed, then motherhood.

“If you allow a woman with four children, I will study,” she had said softly. The teacher nodded, and so began her second chance at life.

Life in Dasht

Tucked in the rugged terrain of Kech district in sourthern Balochistan, Dasht is a scattered region comprising several remote settlements, each more isolated than the other. The people here have long depended on farming, but the drying local dam has snatched that livelihood too. With water now rationed by number, farmers have to wait days for their turn, ultimately forced to give up altogether.

In search of work, many of them have crossed over to the other side of the border into Iran, while others have moved into darker trades.

But that isn’t all of what is plaguing Dasht. The area lacks fundamental infrastructure — schools, hospitals, clinics. In times of emergencies, there is nowhere to go. Literally.

“A [sick] person has to die in Dasht … or wait,” a resident tells Dawn.com. Pickups leave for Turbat only once a day, typically before 11am, and if you miss it, you wait another day. Those without a vehicle of their own have little to no choice.

However, what Dasht suffers from the most is addiction.

“Here, drugs are like sweets,” says Salma, a widow from Sangai Dasht. “Some powerful men come, ask our men to cut wood, and in return, they hand them crystal meth. That’s how I lost my husband. That’s how many other women are losing theirs.”

Hence, survival in the area often rests on the backs of women. They farm what little land remains, sew intricate embroidery for mere pennies, and walk miles to fetch water from deep, uncovered wells. There’s no reliable mobile network, no electricity, and the only internet is patchy fibre WiFi, accessible only to those who own farmland, not the families working it.

Amidst the mess, it is education that remains the most neglected.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2024-25, unveiled just days earlier, the country’s cumulative expenditure on education — including the federation and provinces — remains a meagre 0.8 per cent, with the literacy rate a little above 60pc. Balochistan tops all the provinces in terms of out-of-school children, with a majority of them being girls.

The condition of schools that do exist is a completely different issue altogether. The survey shows that Balochistan consistently lags behind when it comes to access to electricity, water facilities, and toilet access.

The education epidemic

“There is no schooling after the fifth grade,” says Sanji, a young mother. “Even that exists only on paper. Teachers take their salaries but never show up.” Salma scoffs, recalling the time when she tried to enroll her daughter in the sixth grade in Turbat. “They told me she’s not even fit for the first grade. And they were right. Our kids hardly see a teacher’s face. How can they read?”

At government schools in Dasht, if a teacher appears at all, they arrive at 8am and leave within an hour. There are no peons, no inspections, no accountability. “No officer has ever visited our school,” claims Sanji. “Why would they? They get paid either way.”

“Teachers who are posted here from Turbat often don’t come themselves,” she continues. “They find someone local, hand them half their salary, and never set foot in the school again.” The locals assigned in their place, she adds, have only seen a blackboard from afar. “How are they expected to teach?”

It’s in this forgotten stretch of Balochistan, where silence and survival go hand-in-hand, that a class of 49 students, ranging from 11-year-old boys to 25-year-old girls, have gathered under a short-term, accelerated learning project supported by Unicef.

The United Nations agency’s 18-month initiative focuses on providing access to education for out-of-school children through the establishment of middle-level Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) centres. They educate children who have either never enrolled in school or dropped out, enabling them to catch up academically and transition into the formal education system at the middle-school level.

According to Faiz ur Rehman, Unicef’s Kech district project coordinator, the programme was launched in Tehsil Dasht on March 12, 2025, with a syllabus designed by the Bureau of Curriculum, Balochistan. “It’s different from the regular classroom syllabus,” he noted, “and is specifically tailored for children aged nine to 15.”

A second chance

The class gathers each morning in the lone room of a crumbling government boys’ primary school in Kont-e-Dar, one of Dasht’s few remaining functional school buildings. Here, under one roof, students from four distant pockets of Dasht — Kont-e-Dar, Jangol ay Mehtag, Merani Dem Mehtag, and Achanak Bazar sit shoulder to shoulder.

Some walk up to 40 minutes on foot to reach the school. Boys often hop onto the back of passing pickups. Girls, in pairs or alone, walk dusty roads under the unforgiving sun — Kech is known for being one of the hottest regions in the province — with their books wrapped in cloth.

These long walks are not a rarity in other areas of Balochistan, where schools are few and far, with limited resources to reach them. The distances between settlements are vast. “In this heat, it feels like the head is boiling by the time we get to school,” says Ghani, a 12-year-old student.

“Whenever a biker or a pickup stops to give us a lift, it feels like the happiest day. When they don’t stop … we just send a pitiful curse their way.”

At the school, the classroom space is tight. The heat is unforgiving. There’s no electricity, no solar power. The washroom is nonfunctional. Children take breaks just to splash water on their faces before returning to class, their clothes soaked in sweat. The desks, small and few, strain to hold both the young boys and grown women. The students sweep the classroom floor themselves.

“Sometimes our hands ache,” says Shamsi, who just enrolled without ever having had a pause in her education, “but that doesn’t trouble us.”

“In winter, it becomes worse. When the cold wind hits us, we shake, we keep trembling. Sometimes, on our way, we stop at a villager’s kitchen just to warm up in front of the fire, and then go back to school… only to find the teacher absent,” she scorns.

But what now troubles them is something else entirely: the fear that this opportunity might vanish after 18 months. “What happens after that?” the children ask. It’s not a question about the syllabus. It’s a question about continuity.

For many in the room, this isn’t the first time their education has stopped, and they fear it won’t be the last. In most parts of Dasht, schooling ends at the fifth grade. The children who once dropped out for lack of options now fear another long wait. Another lost decade.

Sangeen, 22, sits at the far end of the classroom. A widow with no children, she walks nearly 30 minutes from Jangol Mehtag each day. “There’s nothing for me at home,” she says. “After school, I do embroidery to survive.” She had passed the fifth grade seven years ago. “I don’t know with what hope I’m studying now.

“Maybe just because they say education opens your eyes.” She pauses, then laughs. “But if this project ends, will I have to wait another seven years?”

Usman is 13, his skin sunburnt from days of walking under the scorching sun. A hat shields his face. “It protects me from the sun,” he grins. Each morning, he joins the class and learns what everyone else learns, but often leaves early as there’s work to be done — he is a shepherd and must tend to his goats. The little he earns from collecting grass and watching over the herds, he hands to his mother.

When asked what his father does, he smiles with blank eyes. “Mani pith, mani pith ady cryshtal kasheeth (my father uses crystal meth),” he says.

What will he do after the project ends? Usman shrugs and looks over at the girls in the class, many of whom returned to school after years. “I’ll wait another seven years,” he laughs. The chuckles follow, reverberating through the school’s weak walls. But the silence returns the next moment, heavy and unspoken.

Maryam returned to school this March after a gap of five years. She had once completed fifth grade, yet couldn’t spell her own name. “Now I can,” she says, a hint of pride tucked behind her shy smile.

She recalls those early school days with a dry laugh. “The teacher would show up early, stay for an hour, and then vanish. We’d be thrilled, we could go home!” Maryam pauses. “We thought that was happiness. Now we know it was not.”

The current project offered her another chance. But with only 18 months promised, uncertainty looms again. “If this ends,” she says, “I’ll ask the whole class to stage a dharna (protest). But I don’t know where we’d even go. No one listens anyway.”

Against all odds

Only two teachers run this middle-school-level class in Dasht: Mahwish, who travels from Turbat city, and Shabeena, a local from Dasht. Each day, Mahwish makes the bumpy journey to Kont-e-Dar, often passing children walking alone or in clusters along the dusty road.

“Sometimes I give them a lift,” she says. “They come from different bazars, and when they see my car, they start running. They know the teacher is here.”

Their rush, she adds, carries a history. “Maybe it’s because they’ve grown up not expecting teachers to show up. So when one actually does, they run not to miss it.”

At 22, Ganjatoon is married and back in school after a six-year hiatus. She doesn’t speak in abstractions. Her words are blunt. “Ma zaalbol eda barbaady (we women here are suffering),” she says in Balochi.

In her part of Dasht, she says, it feels like there are no men left. “Most are addicted. Some sell drugs openly. If anyone dares to complain, the naib arrests them, but then a phone call comes, and the drug seller walks free.”

She traces the suffering back to the shoulders that carry everything. “We women do it all,” she says. “From farming to embroidery, to fetching water, we have to, because the men are lost to addiction.”

Their struggle doesn’t end with work. Ganjatoon says their homes, made of mud, collapse into crisis every time it rains. “When it pours, water drips from the roof until the house is soaked from top to bottom,” she says. “After the rain, another struggle begins, of drying, rebuilding, just surviving.”

She is aware that the odds are stacked against her. “I won’t get a job because I’m studying,” she says. “That post will go to someone who will never show up to teach.” But still, she shows up every day.

“I will study so that at least I can teach the children in my bazar when this project ends. I want to keep them away from nasha.”

Promises or distant echoes?

Aurelia Ardito, chief of education at Unicef Pakistan, acknowledges both the progress and persistent gaps.

“Kech is among the top-performing districts in Balochistan, second only to Quetta,” she notes, citing Education Management Information System 2022–23 data showing over 86,000 enrolled students. Girls’ enrollment rose by 30 per cent in recent years, and progression rates surpass provincial averages.

“But in Dasht, challenges remain — missing infrastructure, no toilets, no electricity, and serious teacher shortages.”

The district education officer of Kech, Sabir Ali, confirms these struggles. “Most schools are single-teacher institutions,” he says. “If that one teacher is absent, the school simply can’t run.”

He says the education department is developing a 365-day plan for Kech — with reforms in teacher attendance, filling vacancies, and improving quality. Unicef, too, emphasises its commitment to supporting education in Balochistan and beyond.

But for the 49 students in this dust-walled classroom, the promises are distant echoes. They have already spent years watching schools remain locked, waiting on teachers who never came, and watching futures slip quietly out of reach. Whether this school will continue once the project ends — or slip back into silence — is a question that lingers like chalk dust in the dry air of Dasht.

Yet, the students of Dasht show up every day. Because hope, here, is not a policy. It’s the act of walking miles in the heat, of sitting on hard desks, of vowing to teach the next child even when no one is teaching you.

Header image: Students sit outside their classroom in Dasht. — all photos by author

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto made a striking observation: 80 per cent of Italy’s wealth was owned by just 20pc of its population. Startled by this imbalance, he formulated what would later become known as the Pareto Principle — or the 80/20 rule — suggesting that a small percentage of causes are responsible for a large part of the results. Though it began as an anecdotal insight, the principle eventually found its way into boardrooms, business schools, and self-help manuals.

More than a century later, the Global South stands as living proof that Pareto wasn’t far off. If economic inequality had a modern poster child, this part of the world would be it.

Once a loosely defined term for ‘Third World’ countries, the ‘Global South’ has evolved in recent years into a more meaningful label. Policymakers, academics, and journalists now use it to describe nations — many of them former colonies — that are part of the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc of roughly 120 countries committed to principles such as sovereignty, anti-imperialism, and self-determination.

But such ideals don’t always pay the bills. The Global South is home to 85pc of the world’s population, yet it generates only 39pc of global GDP. This is the textbook definition of economic imbalance. And the future doesn’t look too bright either. According to the World Bank’s 2024 annual report, over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people in the region will step into working age. Yet the job market is expected to create just 424 million new positions. That’s not a gap — it’s a gaping chasm.

While one half of the world is busy riding the wave of the AI revolution — racing to patent algorithms, train billion-dollar generative models, and automate the future — the other half is still waiting for something as basic as electricity. Nearly 600 million people in Africa remain without reliable access to power — that’s almost half the continent’s population, and more than 80pc of the global electricity access gap. It’s a sobering contrast. One side teaches machines to outthink humans; the other side lights candles to chase away the dark. In an era of satellites, AI, and trillion-dollar tech empires, this scale of inequality is dangerous.

The numbers say it all

When it comes to measuring income inequality, few tools are as widely recognised as the Gini Index. The scale runs from 0 to 1, or 0pc to 100pc, where 0pc means perfect equality and 100pc means total inequality (all wealth concentrated in a single pair of hands). According to World Bank data drawn from recent years, South Africa tops the list with a staggering Gini Coefficient of 63pc, while Slovakia sits at the other end with just 24.1pc. For comparison, the United States clocks in at 41.3pc and China at 36.7pc. In South Asia, Pakistan stands at 29.6pc, India at 32.8pc, and Bangladesh at 33.4pc.

But here’s the catch: the Gini Index tells us how income is distributed, not how much wealth there is to go around in the first place. A country could have near-perfect distribution but still be grappling with widespread poverty.

Still, when mapped globally, the Gini Coefficient reveals a clear pattern: countries in the Global South consistently show higher inequality, exposing the structural gaps that income or wealth distribution alone can’t fully explain.

Another way to grasp the depth of income inequality is by looking at who holds what share of a country’s income — the bottom 50pc, the top 10pc, and the top 1pc. National income, after all, is simply the total of what a country’s residents earn in a year, but how it’s divided tells a much bigger story.

According to the World Inequality Database 2024, which tracks income data from 216 countries over two centuries, the picture is incredibly lopsided. The top 10pc of earners control more than half of global income, while the bottom 50pc barely scrape together 10pc. Zoom in by region, and the divide becomes even sharper. Europe stands out as the least unequal, while Latin America, Middle East, and North Africa show the most extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 10pc. In other words, geography still shapes destiny, and in much of the Global South, the odds remain stacked in favour of the few.

The global map of inequality tells a familiar tale — the top 10pc hold a disproportionate share of income, and this imbalance is most stark in the Global South.

A world of haves and have-nots

In Asia, a study focused on India reveals something striking. The ‘Billionaire Raj’ is now more unequal than the colonial British Raj ever was. Since the early 2000s, inequality has soared. The top 10pc in India saw their income share jump from 40pc in 2000 to 58pc in 2023.

The real drivers? The top 1pc, whose slice grew from 15pc to 23pc, while the middle 40pc lost ground, shrinking from 39pc to 27pc. The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024 adds another layer. Out of 112 countries surveyed, 1.1 billion people out of 6.3 billion are living in poverty. India alone accounts for 234 million people living in poverty — more than the total populations of at least 29 smaller Asian nations combined.

In Indonesia and Pakistan, the top 10pc claim 46pc and 42pc of national income, respectively — a quiet confirmation that this is no regional fluke, but a structural feature of inequality across the South.

Latin America remains the world’s most unequal region. Here, the richest 10pc earn 12 times more than the poorest 10pc. In countries like Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay, just 1pc of the population controls between 37pc and 40pc of total wealth. The bottom half? They’re left with barely 10pc.

In Africa, the story grows more complex. While economic growth is occurring, it remains unevenly distributed. A joint report by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the World Bank reveals that between 1980 and 2016, the richest 1pc of Africans captured 27pc of total income growth. In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa — home to just 16pc of the world’s population — carries 67pc of the world’s extremely poor.

The takeaway is clear — economic growth may lift national economies, but it does not guarantee equitable outcomes.

This stark disparity across the Global South can largely be traced back to colonial legacies. Under colonial rule, land and resources were concentrated in the hands of a privileged few, entrenching class divisions that continue to shape social and economic realities today. Even after independence, low social investment, unequal access to education, weak tax systems, and the enduring influence of powerful elites in policymaking have all worked to reinforce these imbalances. And so today, we have a system that not only tolerates but sustains inequality — not just in Latin America, but throughout the Global South.

Even advanced economies like the United States aren’t immune to the rising tide of inequality. A recent survey found that, after immigration, income inequality ranked as the second most pressing concern for Americans, with many hoping Trump would address it within his first 100 days in office. It’s not hard to see why.

Consider this: the collective net worth of America’s top 12 billionaires now exceeds $2 trillion. Between March 18, 2020, and December 3, 2024, their combined wealth soared by $1.3 trillion — a 193pc increase. If evidence of deepening inequality is needed, the pandemic offers it in plain sight. Covid-19 did a lot more than disrupt lives; it supercharged billionaire fortunes, widening an already vast wealth divide.

A 2022 study co-authored by Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu highlights another powerful driver of inequality: automation. By replacing human labour in industries like retail, manufacturing, and customer service, automation alone accounted for 50–70pc of the growing income gap between more-educated and less-educated workers from 1980 to 2016 — a sobering reminder that technology, without the right policies in place, can entrench inequality rather than alleviate it.

Now, what about the future? In 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sounded the alarm, expressing “profound concerns” over labour disruptions and rising inequality as economies begin to adopt generative AI at scale. The Fund warned that generative AI could amplify the market power of already-dominant firms, accelerating the shift toward winner-takes-all dynamics and further concentrating capital in the hands of a few.

Here’s what Pakistan needs to do

For countries in the Global South like Pakistan, the moment has arrived for a fundamental shift in development strategy. The obsession with short-term growth at the expense of inclusive development has only deepened systemic imbalances. Yet Pakistan holds immense potential to chart a different course by leveraging its vast natural wealth, including minerals, coal, crude oil and natural gas.

Geological surveys estimate the value of the country’s untapped mineral reserves at over $6 trillion. However, true progress cannot be measured by extraction alone. It will be defined by how equitably the resulting wealth is distributed and how effectively it contributes to uplifting the lives of ordinary citizens.

To address the persistent disparities in economic opportunity, Pakistan must begin to reorient its policy framework toward broader public welfare and inclusive governance. This requires building a culture rooted in meritocracy, holding institutions accountable, eliminating inefficiencies, and dismantling the bureaucratic red tape that stifles innovation. Only then can economic growth translate into meaningful, shared prosperity.

A progressive tax system, in its true spirit, is essential — one that fairly distributes the fiscal burden across all segments of society, rather than disproportionately weighing on salaried workers. Revenue, once mobilised, should be invested where it counts most: education, health and social protection. With nearly 64pc of Pakistan’s population under the age of 30, targeted spending on education is no longer optional, it’s imperative. This demographic presents a unique opportunity; only an educated, skilled, and empowered youth can steer the country toward inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

Equally important is the expansion and depoliticisation of social safety nets. Conditional cash transfer programmes, especially those tied to education and nutrition, can lift millions out of poverty if implemented with transparency and fairness. Targeted subsidies that empower small entrepreneurs and marginalised communities, rather than inflating the profits of the elites, can unleash Pakistan’s true economic potential and drive grassroots development.

These are not just prescriptions for Pakistan, they are imperatives for any country in the Global South wrestling with the scourge of entrenched inequality. Real development is not measured by growth alone, but by the inclusivity of that growth. Until economies are restructured to empower the many rather than enrich the few, progress will remain superficial. The numbers may impress on paper, but the lived reality for millions will continue to tell a far bleaker story.

The future demands inclusive progress

While rising economic inequality is a global crisis, its effects are felt far more acutely in the Global South. Here, the absence of robust social safety nets and underfunded welfare programmes amplifies the disparities, standing in stark contrast to the well-funded and designed welfare systems of the West, supported by effective tax policies and the capacity to absorb national debt.

Meanwhile, as billions are funnelled into military spending and the technological arms race — ranging from Artificial Intelligence to quantum computing and supercomputers — the chasm between North and South threatens to grow even wider. Unless global leaders confront this economic divide with urgency and vision, the Pareto Principle will ring truer than ever, with a small elite controlling an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth and opportunity.

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Asadullah Khan sits on a chair outside a washed-out old building for 12 hours every day in the punishing Karachi heat. Wearing a navy blue uniform, the security guard leaves his house near Ziauddin Hospital in Clifton right after Fajr prayer to walk the 10-kilometre stretch to his workplace in Saddar. It takes him two hours every day to reach on time for a job that pays a meagre Rs25,000 each month.

By noon, the humidity forces him to take off his sweat-drenched shirt and dry it off by placing it in front of the shabby fan available in the parking area of his office building. This is also when he steals some time to cool off in front of the same fan.

At around 7 pm, it is time for him to walk another two hours back to his one-room apartment that he shares with his family of five.

“I have to pay Rs7,000 rent from my salary for the room, but we get by,” he said, with a smile, a permanent fixture on his otherwise worn face.

Asadullah is not even aware that what he is earning is 33 per cent below the minimum wage fixed by the Government of Pakistan. The federal minimum wage was set at Rs37,000 for the outgoing fiscal year of 2024-2025, according to the 2024 notification, which had increased by 15.6pc from the previous year. For the current fiscal year 2025-2026, the government decided to maintain the minimum wage at Rs37,000.

According to the Sindh Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), over 80pc of private industrial units are not implementing the order of minimum wage.

“Around 95pc of factories do not give minimum wage to their workers,” Nasir Mansoor, General Secretary of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), told Dawn.com.

Asadullah, completely alien to his right to demand the minimum wage, said that his employer increased his salary whenever he requested it. When asked what he thought his rightful salary was, he replied: “Maybe Rs30,000?”

Pakistan is heavily dependent on its labour class economically, yet the country has not been able to give due weight and importance to the rights and interests of its labourers, according to a 2019 Sindh High Court-commissioned report.

“The ‘industry’ of a nation is always the backbone of its economy, which normally depends upon the labour class,” the report highlighted.

‘Wage theft’

Seated in a cramped, 5x5ft room with dark brown walls, where the breeze from the windows offered the only relief from Karachi’s scorching heat and humidity, Manesh Das* wore a ferozi-coloured kurta, stained with patches of brown that had almost altered its original hue. His kurta was drenched in sweat, and his brown skin glistened with it.

Das had left his family of six — his wife and children — with his parents and siblings in Tando Mohammad Khan four to five months ago, hoping to break free from the shackles of the zamindar he once worked for, who paid him only in crops, never in money. Kumar had believed that moving to the city would at least allow him to send some money back home.

But from his meagre salary of Rs15,600 received in weekly instalments — earned by sweeping roughly a one-kilometre stretch in Ranchor Line every day from 8am to 3pm — he is only able to send Rs8,000 to Rs10,000 home.

“Even going home costs almost Rs4,000 to Rs5,000, which we cannot afford,” he said.

Labour rights activist Naeem Sadiq, during an interview with Dawn.com, explained that the national minimum wage for unskilled workers is set at Rs37,000 for an 8-hour daily shift, for working 26 days per month (the wages slightly vary by skill level and province). If a worker puts in overtime, they are entitled to receive double their regular hourly wage.

Citing the example of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB), where Das is currently employed, Sadiq calculated approximately Rs2.4 billion in annual wage theft by the institution.

According to the rights activist, the SSWMB employs 12,000 sanitation workers. Each employee is paid approximately Rs20,000 per month, which means there was a Rs17,000 worth of stolen wages from each employee per month, entailing that each worker is owed Rs200,000 just for the year 2024-25.

“Now imagine Rs17,000 being stolen per person per month for 12,000 people. It comes to Rs2.4 billion per year. So, Rs2.4 billion is being distributed among the top guys as a bribe. Not as a bribe, as stealing, as wage theft.”

For his part, Tariq Ali Nizamani, the SSWMB’s managing director, told Dawn.com that the board is currently responsible for managing waste for 70pc of Karachi, for which they have approximately 10,000 people as part of the sanitation force, and another 5000 workers comprising their drivers, helpers, and on-ground management staff.

The SSWMB hires these workers through a third party. According to Nizamani, they direct the contractors to pay the minimum wage set by the government. He was positive that they pay this amount to the workers on the street, as they have methods to ensure that.

“We have an in-house committee; our officers and the assistant director work in the zone. The deputy director is working in the district. Plus, we have not received any such complaint that they are getting less salary.”

But the ground realities narrate a different story.

Hussain Amir*, a resident of Lyari, works as a rickshaw driver for a company contracted by the SSWMB. Before he was fired for complaining, he earned Rs32,000 while driving a garbage truck. As a result of that complaint a few months ago, he was dismissed. After much pleading, he has managed to return to the same company—this time as a rickshaw driver—on a reduced salary, and now earns a mere Rs25,000.

Das, the sweeper, could only partially speak Urdu, but one thing he made sure to communicate clearly was that he did not want his name or picture included in the story — as there had been cases of workers being fired for complaining.

“They do not issue any contractual letters to workers to prevent them from unionising — because if they do, we will help them file complaints and ensure their contractors abide by the law,” Zulfiqar Shah, Chairman of the All Pakistan Local Government Workers Federation, told Dawn.com.

Karachi South is under contract with a Turkish company, Aysis, Shah added — a detail that was also confirmed by Nizamani.

According to Shah, sweepers and drivers like Das and Abid have been hired through fourth- and fifth-party contractors.

“The companies have resorted to petty contracting — asking their people to recruit groups of workers to make up the required labour force.”

Das’s fellow sweeper, Karim Akash*, comes from a village in Hyderabad. Like Das, he finds any space he can at the Karachi Metropoltian Cooperation (KMC) workshop to sleep, and relies on Saylani Welfare Trust for food. He confirmed that there is no written agreement with the person who hired them.

“I was told about this job by a contractor in my village, who then connected me with a contractor here.”

“Every morning, he [the contractor] takes our picture to mark attendance. A supervisor comes to count the number of workers. He [the supervisor] gives the money to the contractor, and we are paid in cash every week,” Akash added.

When Dawn.com reached out to Nizamani again after receiving this information, he again mentioned that there have been no direct complaints, however, they have received some indirect complaints due to which they are already talking to contractors about putting the sanitation workers on a payroll.

He also requested Dawn.com to speak to him after reading a write-up by the board which said, “The SSWMB had made contracts for provision of sanitation services with the international companies registered in Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).”

“The said contracts are clear that the SSWMB will pay the companies for their verified provided services as per the contract and shall impose penalties for any highlighted negligence as prescribed in the contracts.”

The write-up elaborated that the, “SSWMB has neither hired directly or indirectly any sanitation worker nor paid any wages to any sanitation worker. The companies being in service contract with SSWMB are being paid for the services which they provide under the Service Contract Agreements, and companies are bound to abide all prevailing laws of the Government.”

“Such allegation over SSWMB regarding payment of mere pittance to sanitation workers of Karachi and Hyderabad who work as third party daily wagers is denied,” it stated.

Is minimum wage enough?

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a monthly income of over Rs75,000 is required to support a family of six with basic necessities such as food, housing, utilities, healthcare and education.

The HRCP has urged that wages must reflect the principle that “full-time workers should be able to live with security, health and hope,” as the government prepared to announce the federal budget of the upcoming fiscal year 2025-2026.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) also demanded a raise in minimum wage from Rs37,000 to Rs50,000 prior to the budget announcement.

Citing a World Bank report, PPP’s Labour Bureau Head Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed said that 44pc of the population is living below the poverty line and called for better health facilities for industrial workers and an increase in their death and marriage grants.

Hina Amin*, a machine operator at a denim manufacturing factory in Korangi’s industrial area, doesn’t even care for a raise. Before even waiting to hear the full question about her wage, she started expressing her frustration regarding the untimely payment of salary.

“Why do people work? You tell me. They work for a livelihood.” Amin exclaimed.

“Believe me, we have to fight and protest for our month’s salary. If we protest, we are thrown out,” she added.

Amin is salaried at the minimum wage of Rs37,000. She spends at least Rs60 daily travelling to and from work, in addition to her rent, bills, and grocery. Since the factory does not have a canteen, the workers have to manage their food as well. Sometimes, even when a worker scheduled for a 9am to 6pm shift arrives a few minutes before 9, they are still marked late — resulting in a further deduction from their salary.

When asked if she had tried to request a higher salary to make ends meet, she complained that the workers were already not receiving their salaries on time, which was her primary concern.

“First, they should at least give us our salaries on time so that we don’t have to take loans to pay our rents. Then comes the topic of salary increase,” she stated.

“If we say anything, they will kick us out […] we are helpless,” she added.

Sadiq echoed Amin’s thoughts on the matter. He said that in an ideal world, the minimum wage should be at least Rs60,000. “We should and we will certainly push for those wages.”

However, “this discussion should normally begin after workers are getting what is already the minimum wage,” he stressed.

“Sadly, right now, we are fighting for every morsel and every breath.”

‘There is no way to save them’

So who decides what the minimum wage should be? Who ensures it is abided by? And whom does one turn to when it’s not?

Labour law expert, Danish Nayyer, explained that following the 18th Amendment, labour laws were devolved to the provinces. Now, all provinces have their own laws and procedures for declaring and implementing minimum wages.

Nayyer told Dawn.com that in Sindh, the Sindh Minimum Wages Act, 2015 governed the area. In pursuance of the Act, the Labour and Human Resources Department of the provincial government declared the minimum wage. Currently, the minimum wage for unskilled workers is fixed at Rs37,000, similar to the federal level.

Last year, following the announcement of the budget for 2024-2025, Public Accounts Committee Chairman Nisar Ahmed Khuhro admitted to the violation of labours laws and directed the Sindh Employees Social Security Institution (SESSI) and the labour department to strictly implement the policy of providing the minimum monthly wage to all workers across the province after reviewing the audit reports of SESSI for the years 2018 and 2019.

Speaking to Dawn.com, SESSI commissioner, Miandad Rahoojo, explained that the institution has around 780,000 registered workers, all of whom are receiving at least the minimum wage. The commissioner admitted, however, to a mass violation of minimum wage laws across Sindh, including some “serious” cases of violations, especially at brick kilns where the lives of workers resemble “the worst form of slavery”.

“Even pre-Islamic times were not as bad as this,” he lamented.

Rahoojo said, however, that the responsibility of ensuring the implementation of wage laws and of maintaining a complete digital base for it is on the Labour Department, clarifying that SESSI does not cater to any complaints regarding the violation of the law either.

“SESSI doesn’t cater to these complaints. There is a minimum wage board, which announces [the wage] and the labour department ensures its implementation. SESSI only registers the workers who get the minimum wage. In a way, SESSI has a role in the reactive way.”

The secretary of the Minimum Wage Board, Naeem Mangi, had a similar response.

“When it comes to the question of implementation, it is the responsibility of the labour department; we only fix the minimum wages,” he concurred.

He said their board often received complaints through the PM’s Portal regarding violation of the minimum wage law; however, if the investigation starts, the company would usually fire that employee.

“There is no way to save them.”

Where to file a complaint?

NTUF General Secretary Mansoor told Dawn.com that one can complain against the employer to the joint director of the labour department. “There is no cost of complaint.”

However, there is no helpline for complaints or any awareness campaigns for employees like Asadullah and Haq to educate them on their rights and processes to raise their voice in the case of violation of their rights.

The lawyer, Nayyer, explained that under the Sindh Payment of Minimum Wage Act, if an employee wants to report a case of underpayment, they must file a complaint to the Payment of Wages Authority.

“There is no helpline with respect to filing any complaint; the complaint has to be made in writing and filed before the authority,” Nayyer stated.

“The employee can either file the complaint directly in their personal capacity, for which there are no costs, or they can choose to file the complaint through a lawyer; the legal fee varies from lawyer to lawyer.”

Nayyer added that the authority writes to the employer once they have received a complaint.

As to who would act as the final arbiter in this scenario, the the Sindh Minimum Wage Act 2015 states: “Government may, by notification in the official Gazette, appoint any person to be authority for any area, specified in the notification, to hear and decide all claims arising out of non- payment, or delay in the payment of wages to workers in that area whose minimum rates of wages have been declared under the provisions of this Act.”

“Both parties then get the right to a hearing, they can make the employer pay you a minimum wage and can pass an order,” Nayyer elaborated.

“Under the Sindh Minimum Wages Act 2015 and its rules, the Sindh Minimum Wages Rules, 2021, the Authority has the powers under the Sindh Land Revenue Act, 1976 to seize or attach bank accounts of employers in case they do not comply with the payment of minimum wages,” Nayyer elaborated.

As per the Sindh Minimum Wage Act 2015, Section 9(3):

“Any employer who contravenes the provisions of this section shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees but not less than twenty thousand rupees or with both, in addition to payment of sum not less than the difference in wages actually paid to the worker and the amount which would have been paid to him had there been no such contravention.”

Inspecting violation

Awais Ali Chandio, a machine operator at a denim manufacturing factory in Karachi’s Korangi, is salaried at Rs37,000 but must put in at least 50 hours overtime per month to meet his family’s needs. Luckily, since he is a company employee, he gets double his hourly rate — Rs300 per hour — until he works 50 hours as overtime per month. Beyond that, he receives the usual Rs150 for each hour of overtime work.

Unfortunately, though, the contractual employees at his company do not share the same perks despite fulfilling the same duties as Chandio’s.

“They get paid somewhere between Rs28,000 to Rs32,000; their overtime rate is also just Rs100 per hour,” said Chandio.

Although it is not company policy, employees at Chandio’s workplace are still hired on a contractual basis.

“The management pulls this off to fill their stomachs. This way, they are able to make at least Rs20,000 per employee,” he said, while criticising the managers, adding that the company had around 200 to 250 contractual employees hidden among a few thousand company employees.

The question is, who is in charge of pointing out such practices and putting an end to them?

As per the 2019 SHC report, in order to monitor “whether application of minimum wage has been observed as set down by the Government of Sindh, the inspectors had been appointed under section 14 of the Act 2015.”

It elaborated on the inspection system.

“The purpose of appointing inspectors is to carry out inspections under Rule 22 of the West Pakistan Minimum Wages Rules 1962 which states, that if any inspector during the inspection detects any irregularity on the part of employer, they should advise management of the establishment to rectify the same and in case of further violation of minimum wage laws, such establishments should be prosecuted in the Court of Law.

“During the visits of [the] Commission across Sindh, it was observed that several posts of inspectors within the meaning of Section 14 of the Act 2015, were lying vacant,” the report said.

It added that, “When it was asked of the Secretary Labour Department and the Chairman Minimum Board as to whether any violation of minimum wages had been detected, they denied the fact regarding the violation of Sindh Minimum Wages Act.”

“In case of any violation of Minimum Wages, such establishments are prosecuted in the court of law,” the report cited Saeed Saleh Jumani, Incharge Chairman Minimum Wage Board.

“Labour inspector, labour officer, assistant director, director, deputy director and joint director go to factories and organisations to implement wage laws […] only they know what happens then,” Mangi commented.

Why the ‘poor implementation’?

For civil rights activist and lawyer, Jibran Nasir, workers’ rights remain poorly protected in Sindh due to systemic failures of both the Labour Department and SESSI.

He highlighted SESSI’s failure in recovering over Rs500 million in outstanding dues from employers and “eroding employees’ trust” by ignoring reimbursement claims of medical expenses by employees for three years.

Jibran also criticised the Labour Department for not producing records of any formal complaints regarding non-payment of minimum wage, despite widespread evidence of violations. “It also failed to present even a record of complaints received, reflecting weak enforcement and worker fear. There is no updated or integrated database of workers or businesses, severely limiting oversight,” he said.

Each year, the federal government releases a notification updating the minimum wage after the budget release, often only after much pressure from trade unions and activists, said Sadiq. This alone speaks volumes of the authorities’ priorities when it comes to those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

“People like me often push for the notification after the budget is released, as the minimum wage notification is often missing,” said Sadiq. “Ultimately, the minimum wage notification is issued somewhere in September.”

Sporadically, the government runs campaigns to implement minimum wage laws and spread awareness. According to SESSI’s Rahoojo, his department has run several awareness campaigns over the years. “We have launched a campaign for awareness. We are meeting every trade association to ask them to register employees,” he said. The employers, however, usually resist registering the workers and paying them minimum wage, he added.

“If the employer has 1,000 workers, he would register 50 of them. This is discrimination,” he lamented.

For Jibran Nasir though, this is all a hogwash. “Annual increases in minimum wage appear more performative than impactful, as poor implementation, official apathy, and corruption prevent these measures from translating into real benefits,” he said, marking it as the main reason workers remain largely unprotected and excluded from basic legal entitlements.

Challenges faced by the industry

At a post-budget press conference last month, Minister of Finance Muhammad Aurangzeb, when questioned on giving a 10pc raise to civil servants while maintaining status quo on the minimum wage in the current fiscal year, requested to raise this question with industrial associations and “get their feedback on it.”

He mentioned the industry’s “big question on formal versus informal sector” and linked the question of minimum wage with industry competitiveness.

“I think at this point, we are at a good place with minimum wage,” he added.

The industry, it appears, seems to agree with him. According to federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Marketing Director Faizul Haq, it is important to apply these laws in a gradual, phased and “realistic fashion” by keeping account of the ground realities and the capacity of businesses, “specifically small, medium enterprises to pay their labour.”

“The main point here primarily concerns the cost of doing business, and wages are an important and significant component of the same.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Chief Financial Officer of a major export company told Dawn.com that while the objective behind minimum wage laws is good, which is to improve the lives of the workers, lawmakers need to think about demand in the economic engine in the “real sense”.

“Businesses, especially the labour-intensive ones, are facing challenges due to a slowdown in demand. So, policy makers also need to think about creating an enabling environment.”

Faizul, on the other hand, while explaining the cyclical nature of business, highlighted the drawbacks of not factoring in economic compulsions while fixing minimum wages.

“If you burden the businesses, the ultimate cost would be paid by the consumers, and it would result in inflation because if the products or services are costlier, the cost would ultimately be transferred to the end consumers.”

“The whole cycle needs to be understood, and it has to be done in consultation with the business community.” He emphasised the importance of dealing with this issue, keeping in mind the economic outcomes instead of the political ones.

“We have to understand that this is an economic question rather than a political question […] this is a cycle and this cycle needs to be understood in a phased and logical manner.”

For the security guard Asadullah and millions like him, the wrangling between the industrialists and the government holds little meaning. He will likely continue to work for a pittance, as authorities and business owners continue to point fingers, with little thought or concern for the plight of workers who find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet even if they are lucky to get minimum wage.

*Names changed to protect identity.

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