At the centre of the ongoing unrest in Pakistan occupied Jammu-Kashmir lies a challenge that extends beyond electricity tariffs and inflation. The deeper issue is governance and a widening trust deficit between citizens and institutions.

The political unrest witnessed across Pakistan administered Kashmir since 2023 and the parallel grievances emerging in Gilgit-Baltistan represent one of the most significant governance challenges confronting Pakistan in recent years. While public attention has largely focused on the immediate triggers of protests; electricity tariffs, wheat subsidies, inflation and rising costs of living, the underlying causes are far deeper and more structural.

The rise of the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) has transformed local economic grievances into a broader movement demanding accountability, transparency and political responsiveness. The movement has highlighted growing dissatisfaction regarding governance practices, implementation of government commitments and the perceived disconnect between decision makers and ordinary citizens.

At the same time, recurring protests in Gilgit-Baltistan regarding constitutional status, resource utilisation, development priorities and economic opportunities have exposed similar governance fault lines. Although Pakistan administered Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan remain distinct political entities, both regions demonstrate increasing demands for meaningful participation in decision making and a greater share of economic benefits arising from strategic projects.

The central question confronting Pakistan government is whether existing institutions can adapt to rising public expectations regarding accountability, representation and development.

The mountains of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan have historically been viewed through the lens of geopolitics. However, political developments of the last five years suggest a gradual shift in public priorities.

Increasingly, ordinary citizens are focusing on issues that directly affect their daily lives. The cost of electricity, availability of employment, quality of infrastructure, reliability of public services and effectiveness of governance have become central concerns. These issues have generated a new form of political mobilisation that differs significantly from traditional political movements.

The emergence of the Joint Awami Action Committee represents perhaps the clearest example of this transformation. Unlike conventional political organisations, JAAC derived its legitimacy not from ideological positions or constitutional debates but from its ability to articulate practical concerns affecting ordinary citizens.

The current unrest should therefore be understood not simply as a reaction to economic hardship but as part of a broader process through which citizens seek greater accountability, responsiveness and participation in governance.

 Rise of  Joint Awami Action Committee

The emergence of the Joint Awami Action Committee represents one of the most significant political developments in Pakistan occupied Jammu-Kashmir in recent years. Unlike traditional political parties, JAAC emerged organically from civil society and grassroots activism. Its origins can be traced to growing public dissatisfaction regarding inflation, rising electricity tariffs and the increasing cost of essential commodities.

Initially, the movement focused on economic concerns. Citizens questioned why regions possessing significant hydropower resources continued to face high electricity costs. Many argued that local populations were not receiving adequate benefits from resources generated within their own territory.

What distinguished JAAC from previous protest movements was its ability to unite diverse segments of society. Traders, transport unions, lawyers, students, labour organisations and civil society groups increasingly coordinated their activities under a common platform.

As demonstrations expanded, the movement’s demands evolved. Economic grievances gradually merged with governance concerns. Protesters began demanding greater transparency, accountability and implementation of previous commitments. Public discourse increasingly focused on whether institutions were capable of responding effectively to citizen concerns.

The rise of JAAC reflects broader regional trends where issue-based movements centered on governance, accountability and public services increasingly challenging the traditional political structures.

Accountability and Crisis of Trust

At the centre of the ongoing unrest in Pakistan occupied Jammu-Kashmir lies a challenge that extends beyond electricity tariffs and inflation. The deeper issue is governance and a widening trust deficit between citizens and institutions. Repeated protests indicate growing concern regarding responsiveness, transparency and implementation of commitments. Disputes over agreements reached between protest leaders and authorities have reinforced perceptions that institutions are not adequately accountable. Economic hardship has intensified these concerns, while digital connectivity has enabled citizens to compare governance outcomes across regions and just across the LoC in Jammu & Kashmir. The resulting crisis is therefore not merely administrative but fundamentally political, centered on legitimacy and public confidence.

POJK and Balochistan: Similar Fault Lines, Different Challenges

Although Pakistan occupied Jammu-Kashmir and Balochistan differ substantially in history and political context, both reveal recurring debates regarding resource utilisation, local participation and development outcomes. In both regions, citizens frequently question whether the benefits generated from local resources are distributed equitably. Another similarity concerns perceptions of centralised decision making and limited local influence over major policy choices. However, important differences remain. The movement in POJK has largely remained civil and issue based, while Balochistan has experienced a prolonged insurgency alongside political activism. The comparison highlights how governance grievances can evolve into broader political challenges when populations feel excluded from decision making processes.

Lessons from East Pakistan

The history of East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 remains a significant lesson in political legitimacy, representation and governance. Historians point to a combination of political exclusion, economic disparities and institutional failures as contributing factors. The contemporary relevance of this experience lies not in drawing direct parallels but in recognising the importance of responsive institutions and public trust. States derive resilience from legitimacy as much as from administrative capacity. The lesson for policymakers is that sustainable stability requires meaningful participation, accountable governance and confidence that institutions represent citizen interests.

Gilgit-Baltistan: Pakistan’s Emerging Strategic Challenge

Gilgit-Baltistan occupies a critical strategic position linking South Asia, Central Asia and China. Its importance has increased significantly with regional connectivity projects and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Despite this strategic significance, recurring public debates concerning constitutional status, subsidies, electricity shortages, trade restrictions and local participation in development have generated periodic protests. Many residents argue that while the region contributes substantially to national strategic objectives, local communities do not always perceive proportional economic benefits. This tension between strategic priorities and local expectations represents one of the most significant governance challenges facing policymakers.

Comparative Development Across LOC

The digital age has transformed public awareness. Citizens increasingly compare governance outcomes, infrastructure, education, healthcare and economic opportunities across regions mainly in Jammu & Kashmir. Such comparisons influence perceptions of governance effectiveness and political legitimacy. Arguably, comparative narratives has shaped the public expectations and it has placed pressure on Pakistan government to demonstrate tangible development outcomes. Infrastructure, tourism, public services and employment opportunities have become important indicators through which populations evaluate governance performance.

Pakistan’s Strategic Dilemma

Pakistan faces a complex challenge in balancing security, development and political responsiveness. Pakistan administered Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan remain strategically important regions. However, democratic protest movements differ fundamentally from conventional security threats. While administrative and security measures may restore temporary stability, long term legitimacy depends upon public confidence, institutional credibility and meaningful participation. Policymakers therefore face the challenge of addressing governance concerns without overt or covert use of Pakistan Army to silence the people by use force or fear of jail.

Future Outlook and Policy Implications

The government of Pakistan immediately needs to restore confidence of the people of the region by increased participation in governance and central institutions. Exploitation of the resources allowed by Pakistan Army and China needs to stop. Failure to address recurring grievances, however, risks perpetuating cycles of protest and mistrust. The broader lesson is that development and governance must progress together. Citizens increasingly expect institutions to be accountable, responsive and capable of delivering measurable improvements in quality of life. Pakistan has to accept the internal challenges first without attributing all its problems to Indian state.

Conclusion

The ongoing protests in Pakistan occupied Jammu-Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan highlight the growing importance of governance, accountability and public trust in contemporary politics. Economic concerns provided the initial catalyst for mobilisation, but the underlying debate increasingly concerns institutional responsiveness and legitimacy. Sustainable stability will depend not only on strategic considerations but also on the ability of institutions to address citizen expectations through transparent governance, meaningful participation and effective development policies. Pakistan needs to take cue from 1971 on how largescale suppression of homogenous communities can lead to outburst of violent protest. The country needs to look inside rather than involve itself in more that what it can chew.

On the one hand, Pakistan keeps China entangled by highlighting the potential of the CPEC; on the other, it abides by the dictates of the IMF to get new loans and delays CPEC projects.

Ishaq Dar, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Pakistan, recently said that “Pakistan and China share a converging vision on regional and global issues.” Dar’s silver-tongue didn’t spell out the “vision”; he doesn’t have one. Pakistan doesn’t have one. That is the reason for its consistent loan-seeking and reliance on foreign bailouts to keep the country’s economy afloat.

Islamabad has been knocking at every possible door with its begging bowl. It holds the record of taking the maximum number of loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – 23 in a short span of over 75 years since joining the financial body in 1950.

A part of Dar’s statement highlighted the true intention behind Pakistan’s relationship with China. Dar said that the ties between Islamabad and Beijing have “grown from strength to strength into a robust economic and strategic partnership”. The downside of the latter part of the statement is that it is overwhelmingly one-sided, heavily favouring Pakistan.

Pakistan has been shrewd in buttering up China to extract maximum economic help from the Chinese. Celebrating Pakistan-China’s 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations with much fanfare remains part of the same policy. Even the Senate passed a resolution praising China for its support for Pakistan. The latter, in turn, has led to Beijing’s entanglement in Pakistan’s economic mess.

Pakistan has become a rentier state, living off financial support provided to it by others. It has time and again failed abysmally to reform its economic structure. From the money coming from outside the country, the ruling elite and the military establishment siphon off a large chunk. Some portion of it is used to manage macroeconomic indicators, to keep hopes of the local population alive and, at the same time, keep money flowing in from countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and international financial institutions.

Islamabad’s relations with China are emblematic of what can be called Pakistan’s rent-seeking policy. For example, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been presented by Islamabad as a “game changer” for the country. The project has been seen as vindicating “ironclad friendship” between Pakistan and China. It is sold to build infrastructure, create jobs, and transform the country’s economic structure for lasting suitability.

Hardly anything concrete has been achieved from the billions of dollars of investment from China. In the last few years, about $8 billion in potential investment was lost due to the failure to woo foreign investors. An editorial in Dawn vindicates the larger failure of the project: “The gap between ambition and delivery is too wide to ignore. The fact that only four SEZs have moved beyond the planning stage in over a decade exposes the deeper failure of execution.” This remains important as 75 per cent of the CPEC was supposed to go into the development of new and old Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that could have boosted outputs to be transported on the corridor to other countries, helping in increasing exports.

Pakistan’s decision not to establish SEZs was taken because the IMF had set no SEZ condition for new loans. On the one hand, Pakistan keeps China entangled by highlighting the potential of the CPEC; on the other, it abides by the dictates of the IMF to get new loans and delays CPEC projects. In this way, it keeps both sponsors hooked.

Despite all hyperbolic talks and symbolism about the potential of the project, given Pakistan’s structural constraints for economic reforms and security threats for foreign investors, CPEC has underperformed in achieving whatever goals it was supposed to achieve. Already, various issues are being raised over the CPEC. Many projects started since it was rolled out in 2014 have not been completed; work on many goes slowly, and many are yet to take off. And whatever has been completed has not yielded economic benefits.

China has realised that. The Chinese have expressed their frustration with Pakistan time and again. The Chinese were “not happy with the current progress of CPEC projects” and wanted the government of Pakistan to work to remove bottlenecks in the implementation of the project. Later, China’s concerns were compounded by increasing armed attacks in Balochistan, also targeting Chinese investments and nationals working on various projects and political instability in Pakistan, asking Pakistan to overcome its political crisis. None of these issues has been addressed. In fact, armed attacks in Balochistan have increased, and political instability remains.

There is a difference in the views of CPEC as well. While for Pakistan the CPEC is projected as a solution to all its problems, for China, it is part of larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Therefore, expectations of the two are consequently different. Both, China and Pakistan, however, are aware of the fact that the CPEC is not meeting the desired expectations. Still, they keep selling it, in Pakistan particularly, by overstating its potential. Both countries have their interests in doing so; more so, Pakistan.

Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves always fall short of the country’s needs to pay for imports and pay back loans to countries and institutions. Pakistan has mostly suffered a current account deficit; lately, again in April, the current account deficit was $324 million. That being the case, Pakistan needs two things: continuous foreign financial aid and its deferment, since it cannot pay back loans on time.

That is the reason Pakistan wants to be in China’s good books: it does so by showering praise on China and highlighting the potential of CPEC, which it knows very well has not been achieved. By rolling a narrative about “iron-clad” relationship, “all-weather” friendship, etc., Pakistan seeks keep China hooked on to the Pakistani dream. Time to time, high level visits and requests from the Pakistani side aim to convince China about investing its fortunes in Pakistan. The recent visit by President Asif Zardari to China was also aimed at securing Chinese assurance to stay engaged economically under CPEC.

Pakistan is eternally busy dragging China into various sectors of its economy. After welcoming Chinese investment in infrastructure, industry and agriculture, Pakistan has now opened the defence sector to China. During Zardari’s visit, it was clear that Islamabad wanted to present provinces as new potential investment options. He went on to sign memorandums of understanding (MoUs) on agriculture technology, water desalination, and tea production, with a focus on provincial-level collaboration: at least two agreements were signed with the Sindh Government.

Even China seems to know it well and has lost its enthusiasm in CPEC. Given the failure of CPEC to achieve its goals, its consistently rising costs, and the security threats to the investment, China now wants to protect the huge investment at all cost. To do so, it has announced new small projects — more to keep a watch on the current investment than being hopeful of securing benefits from them. China has not so far announced any major investment, knowing that previous ones have not yielded desired dividends.

Pakistan has been trying to increase its labour-intensive exports but faces tough competition from countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam. Any possible success in this sector would depend on credible policy determination and a viable business environment. Both these are lacking in Pakistan. And given the mindset of the Pakistani ruling elite, they are likely to continue their rent-seeking policy vis-à-vis China by playing various cards, like offering new sectors for investment, of late.

It is unlikely, however, that the inscrutable but highly mercantile Chinese will fall for Pakistani charm in the realm of economics. This would mean that while Pakistan-China will try to remain geopolitically together, geo-economic bonding between the two will not be as strong as Pakistan would like the world to believe.  

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The international community has, for too long, accepted Pakistan’s victim narrative at face value. The reasoning has often been geopolitical.

Every time the world confronts Pakistan with evidence of its support for terrorism, it responds with the same script. It is a victim of terrorism, not a sponsor. Its neighbours are out to defame it. The groups operating from its soil are rogue actors, beyond state control. The script has worn thin. Operation Sindoor, in May 2025, demolished it.

The Indian airstrikes on the night of May 6 to 7, 2025, did not target shadowy hideouts in remote tribal regions. They targeted Bahawalpur, a city of nearly a million people in central Punjab, well within Pakistan’s settled and policed heartland. They targeted Muridke, the sprawling Lashkar-e-Taiba complex on the outskirts of Lahore. They struck nine sites in total, four in Pakistan proper and five in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The locations told their own story. These were not camps that Pakistan had failed to find. These were camps that Pakistan had built.

The Family Business of Terror

Consider the case of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group whose Bahawalpur headquarters India struck on May 7. Jaish was founded in 2000 by Masood Azhar, a man Pakistan released from Indian custody in December 1999 in exchange for hostages on a hijacked plane. According to multiple accounts cited by Pakistani journalists and Western researchers, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate paraded Azhar through Pakistan after his release on a fundraising tour, and helped him stand up the new outfit.

Pervez Musharraf, who served as Pakistan’s president from 2001 to 2008, admitted in a 2019 interview that Jaish-e-Mohammed had carried out attacks in India on the instructions of Pakistani intelligence. This was not an Indian allegation. This was the former military ruler of Pakistan acknowledging that Pakistan’s spy agency had directed terror operations against a neighbouring country.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group whose Muridke complex India also struck, has a similar profile. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies has documented that Lashkar conducts its attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai siege, with the consent and support of the ISI. David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American operative who scouted the Mumbai targets, testified that he met with six different ISI officers during his time with Lashkar. American investigators identified one of them, known only as Major Iqbal, as having provided 25,000 dollars in cash and direct operational guidance for the attack that killed 166 people.

What the Strikes Revealed

If Jaish and Lashkar were really rogue outfits operating outside Pakistani state control, the strikes of May 7 should have produced confused and uncertain reactions. Pakistan should have struggled to identify what had been hit, who had died, and why. Instead, the response was immediate and revealing. Pakistan’s military leadership knew exactly what had been targeted, because the targets were on Pakistan’s books in all but name.

In September 2025, a senior Jaish commander named Masood Ilyas Kashmiri appeared at the group’s annual Mission Mustafa conference and openly admitted that Masood Azhar’s family had been killed in the Bahawalpur strikes. Ten members of the family died, including Azhar’s sister, her husband, a nephew, a niece, and five children. Four close aides also died. The location of the strike was Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah, the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed, sitting comfortably inside Pakistani territory, with a UN-designated terrorist living openly within its walls.

The picture this paints is unambiguous. Masood Azhar, listed as a global terrorist by the United Nations Security Council since May 2019, was not in hiding. He was at home, with his family, in a complex protected by the Pakistani state. His brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, also a UN-designated terrorist and the operational head of Jaish, was reportedly killed in the same strike. Pakistan’s posture of plausible deniability has rested for decades on the fiction that men like these are difficult to find. India’s strikes proved that the only people who found them difficult to find were Pakistan’s own authorities.

The Cost of the Charade

The international community has, for too long, accepted Pakistan’s victim narrative at face value. The reasoning has often been geopolitical. Pakistan was a frontline state in the Cold War. Pakistan was a partner in the war on terror. Pakistan held nuclear weapons that demanded careful handling. Each of these arguments contained a fragment of strategic logic. None of them justified the systematic protection of men who killed civilians in Indian cities and villages.

The cost of this charade has been borne by India and by the broader region. Pakistan’s continued sponsorship of terror groups has poisoned the entire South Asian neighbourhood. It has prevented the development of normal trade and travel relations. It has consumed resources that could have built schools and hospitals on both sides of the border. And, most tragically, it has cost thousands of innocent lives across decades of attacks that Pakistan’s intelligence services helped plan, fund, and execute.

Operation Sindoor changed the equation. By striking Bahawalpur and Muridke, India made plain what had always been true. The terrorist infrastructure attacking India operates from inside Pakistan, with the protection of the Pakistani state. The terrorist leadership lives in Pakistani cities, raises families in Pakistani neighbourhoods, and runs operations from Pakistani buildings. The fiction of state distance from these activities has collapsed.

The world now has a choice. It can continue to accept the Pakistani script of victimhood, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Or it can finally treat Pakistan as what it has long been: a state that uses terrorism as an instrument of policy, and that pays a price every time it does. India has decided which path it will follow. The international community must now decide which path it can credibly continue to ignore.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The broker gets the headline. Whether the broker shapes the outcome is a different matter entirely.

Every few years, usually after some dramatic diplomatic moment, a version of the same argument resurfaces in Western policy circles: Pakistan, despite being economically fragile and institutionally troubled, keeps showing up at the table. India, despite being the region’s dominant economy and a democracy with global ambitions, somehow doesn’t. The implication is usually that India is doing something wrong, or that Pakistan has figured out a trick India refuses to learn. This reading is understandable. It is also, on closer inspection, considerably overstated.

What Pakistan Actually Does — and What It Costs

Let’s be clear about what Pakistan’s diplomatic record actually consists of. It has, at various points, served as a conduit between parties that could not talk to each other directly. In 1971, it facilitated the Nixon-Kissinger opening to China. Through the 1980s, it managed the American and Saudi pipeline to the Afghan mujahideen. Most recently, in early 2026, it apparently relayed a fifteen-point American peace proposal to Tehran as Washington and Iran traded strikes across the Middle East.

These are real accomplishments. The structural explanation for them is also fairly persuasive: Pakistan is nuclear-armed, so India cannot simply overwhelm it; it is perpetually broke, so it needs patrons and is therefore always in the market for a useful role to play; and it sits at a geographic crossroads that makes it hard for any outside power with regional ambitions to simply ignore. A state that needs patrons to survive is a supplicant. A state that needs patrons for everything except survival has leverage.

But this picture has a shadow side that tends to get glossed over. The same army that makes Pakistan useful as a broker also spent two decades as the Taliban’s primary patron and ran the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, which is perhaps the most consequential act of nuclear irresponsibility since the Cold War. The Saudi-Pakistani defence pact signed in September 2025 — widely celebrated as evidence of Pakistani strategic genius — places Islamabad in the position of simultaneously acting as Sunni military guarantor to Riyadh and back-channel to Tehran, while managing a domestic population that includes forty million Shia Muslims. That is not strategic elegance. That is a set of contradictions held together by willpower and ambiguity, and ambiguity eventually runs out.

As for the 2026 Iran ceasefire — the centrepiece of Pakistan’s current claim to indispensability — what has it actually produced? A communication channel, some announcements, a few deadlines that came and went, and a running commentary on Truth Social that has alternately declared peace imminent and threatened renewed bombardment, sometimes within the same week. Pakistan relayed a message. That is nothing. But it is a long way from a settlement, and attributing structural significance to a back channel whose existence owes something to a crypto deal signed in January 2026 between Pakistan’s army chief and the Trump family’s business venture requires a certain generosity of interpretation.

India’s Forgotten Record

The standard critique of Indian foreign policy — that it is all relationships and no obligations, all presence and no commitment — proceeds as though India’s diplomatic history began sometime around 2014. It didn’t.

During the Korean War, it was India’s V.K. Krishna Menon who broke the armistice deadlock that had stalled negotiations for over a year. The specific problem was prisoner-of-war repatriation — neither side could accept the other’s terms, and the talks had collapsed. India proposed voluntary repatriation overseen by a neutral commission. The formula was adopted in the 1953 Armistice, and India chaired the commission that implemented it. This is precisely the kind of creative, trust-based mediation that gets attributed exclusively to Pakistan in contemporary analysis. It happened, it worked, and it has been largely forgotten.

In Cyprus, from 1964 onward, India contributed meaningfully to the UN peacekeeping force at a moment when Greek and Turkish Cypriot violence was threatening to pull NATO members into direct confrontation. Again, not a passive gesture — load-bearing participation in a genuinely difficult situation.

In South Asia itself, India built SAARC in 1985 as a regional integration framework, and the diagnosis of its failure matters enormously. SAARC did not fail because India lost interest or refused to make commitments. It failed because Pakistan consistently used it as a platform for bilateral grievance rather than regional cooperation — most visibly when the 2016 Islamabad Summit was cancelled after Pakistan-based militants attacked an Indian Army base at Uri. When an institution you helped build gets repeatedly blocked by one of its members, the conclusion to draw is not that you should have built more institutions.

The Gulf: A Different Kind of Presence

The argument that India has no real presence in West Asia because it has no defence pacts or troops stationed in Gulf states reflects a fairly narrow idea of what presence means. Over nine million Indian nationals live and work across the Gulf. Their remittances — exceeding forty billion dollars annually — are not just an economic statistic. They represent a web of human and institutional relationships that generates its own diplomatic weight.

When conflict has broken out in Yemen, Sudan, or Lebanon, India has mounted large-scale evacuation operations for its citizens. These operations do not happen without the quiet cooperation of Gulf governments. That cooperation reflects a relationship of mutual utility — not formalised in a treaty, not legible in alliance databases, but real. India also does not need troops in Riyadh to have influence in Riyadh. It needs Saudi Arabia to care whether India is doing well. Given the depth of economic and human ties, Saudi Arabia does.

More recently, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor — announced at the 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi — represents exactly the kind of connectivity architecture that is supposedly absent from Indian foreign policy. It ties Indian ports to Gulf infrastructure to European markets, and it gives multiple partners a concrete stake in Indian diplomatic stability. It is slower than a defence pact. It is also, arguably, more durable.

Strategic Autonomy and its Variables

None of this means India’s foreign policy is without genuine limitations. The doctrine of strategic autonomy — India as friend to all, obligated to none — has real costs that deserve honest acknowledgement. A state that declines binding commitments on most contested questions of international order does not accumulate allies in the deep sense — states that owe their security to Indian support and therefore have a structural interest in Indian success. Strategic autonomy, practised consistently, means India has many friends and few clients. That is a real constraint on the kind of influence that gets exercised in crisis moments.

Whether that is a correctable policy or structural reality is the more interesting question. India’s size and economic trajectory mean that many states want its friendship regardless of whether it takes sides. The United States cultivated a similar posture through much of the early twentieth century — extensive economic engagement, minimal alliance obligations — and the transition from that posture to full great-power engagement was ultimately forced by external events rather than chosen. Whether the current deterioration of the regional security environment, including the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, might function as a similar forcing moment is perhaps the most consequential open question in South Asian foreign policy today.

What the Competition Actually Is

The framing of India versus Pakistan as competing models of diplomatic influence obscures something important: they are not competing for the same thing. Pakistan is optimised for crisis relevance — it is useful when things are going wrong, when parties cannot talk to each other, when someone needs a conduit. That is a real and valuable role. It is also, by definition, dependent on there being a crisis, on the crisis involving parties who both trust Pakistan, and on the political incentives of outside powers aligning in ways that make Islamabad useful rather than inconvenient.

India is building something slower and harder to see — economic interdependence, connectivity infrastructure, institutional presence across multilateral forums, and the accumulated credibility that comes from not being anyone’s instrument. Whether that model generates more durable influence over the next two decades than Pakistan’s brokerage model is a genuinely open question. But it is the right question to ask, and it is not answered by pointing to who was on the phone with Trump and Tehran in the same week. The broker gets the headline. Whether the broker shapes the outcome is a different matter entirely.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The Yunus-led interim government provided fertile ground for Pakistan to manoeuvre this policy.

When Sheikh Hasina was removed from office in August 2024 after mismanaging two-month student uprising through violence, the political aftershocks were felt well beyond Dhaka. While an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge shortly to stabilize and reset the country, but inside the shifting currents of Bangladeshi politics, there was another country saw opportunity, which was Pakistan.

For Islamabad, the fall of Prime Minister Hasina, who was long perceived as closely aligned with India, appeared to offer a rare strategic opening. The interim arrangement which was crowded by sympathizers of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, created space for religious parties long marginalized under the Awami League’s rule. Pakistan moved quickly with intensified diplomatic exchanges, and even senior military leadership of two countries making reciprocal visits.

But what increased with unusual frequency was Pakistani religious delegations travelling to different cities and towns of Bangladesh from Dhaka to Cox’s Bazar in south and Sylhet in east, among others.

Behind the choreography appeared Islamabad’s clear calculation that if Bangladesh’s Islamist political sphere could be rejuvenated, Dhaka might be kept away from New Delhi and within the broader regional orbit of Islamabad. That bet seems to have failed now. In the recently concluded 13^th general election, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won a landslide two-thirds majority, winning 212 of the 299 seats on the ballot.

Led by Tarique Rahman, son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and former President Ziaur Rahman, BNP campaigned on the slogan of “Bangladesh First”, emphasising that it will not be beholden to any foreign capital. This political messaging seems to have resonated powerfully with the Bangladeshi electorate.

Such a decisive vote has delivered a strong message to Pakistan, which seemed convinced that its favoured Islamist bloc will win the elections and give Islamabad a strong footing in Dhaka.

Pakistan’s Bangladesh policy in the post-Hasina moment followed a familiar template. It has for decades viewed South Asia through the prism of strategic competition with India. Where New Delhi consolidates influence, Pakistan seeks counterweights as has been witnessed in Afghanistan where this logic has shaped policy for years. In Bangladesh, Islamabad appeared to hope for a softer replay.

The Yunus-led interim government provided fertile ground for Pakistan to manoeuvre this policy. As Islamist networks that had faced political constraints under the Awami League suddenly found renewed visibility, Islamabad’s outreach extended beyond official channels into clerical and ideological spaces.

For instance, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of Deobandi Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), led a delegation of around two dozen prominent Pakistani religious leaders to Bangladesh ahead of parliamentary election in November 2025. They addressed large gatherings, organised under the banner of Khatm-e-Nabuwat conferences, across major cities and towns of the country, which were reportedly held in support of Islamist political actors preparing to contest the February 12 election.

The symbolism of this religious affinity was hard to miss and, it seems, Islamabad believed that by encouraging the Islamization of Bangladesh’s political sphere, it could cultivate a government less beholden to India and more receptive to Pakistan.

Yet this approach rested on two flawed assumptions. Firstly, it overestimated the electoral pull of Islamist forces in contemporary Bangladesh and secondly underestimating the depth of Bangladesh’s historical memory around 1971 war crimes committed by Pakistan Army in what was then East Pakistan.

This memory and Islamabad’s reluctance to issue a formal apology over the war crimes remains central to Bangladesh’s national identity. It seems Pakistani policymakers willingly or otherwise seemed to calculate that five decades were enough to blunt that legacy and that religious affinity could transcend historical grievance.

For many Bangladeshis, Pakistan is not simply another state but a former ruler whose actions precipitated immense trauma which remains unchanged across generations. If anything, it has been institutionalized through education, public commemorations and war crimes trials. And BNP’s campaign slogans captured this sentiment with clarity as it called for “Bangladesh First” against any outright alliance with any foreign power (Na Pindi, Na Dilli).

Moreover, Pakistan’s attempt to leverage Islamization as a foreign policy tool also reveals a deeper tension. While Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country, yet its political culture remains fundamentally based on Bengali linguistic nationalism. The Awami League’s secular framing was one expression of that synthesis.

Even the BNP, while more accommodating of religious parties as was witnessed during its earlier rules, has not sought to subordinate national policy to clerical authority. While it is true that interim government’s closeness with Jamaat-e-Islami may have energized segments of Islamist base, but, as the results showed, it did not translate into a groundswell.

Therefore, it is quite possible that Islamabad’s outreach through clerical visits, cross-border religious gatherings, symbolic solidarity may have reinforced suspicions that Islamist mobilization was being externally encouraged. For a country sensitive to sovereignty, such perceptions usually prove counterproductive.

In fact, there is an irony here.  While Pakistan’s own domestic experience illustrates the complexities of entangling religion and statecraft, yet in Bangladesh, it appeared willing to encourage precisely that dynamic in pursuit of geopolitical advantage.

Nevertheless, the failure of Pakistan’s Bangladesh bid echoes its recent miscalculation in Afghanistan where Islamabad’s military-dominated establishment believed that it possessed decisive influence in Kabul after backing Afghan Taliban’s return to power in 2021. But relations with Afghanistan today are strained, marked by months long border closure and recurrent skirmishes along the contested Durand Line dividing the two countries. 

It can be argued that Pakistan overestimated the durability of ideological affinity as a substitute for structural partnership in both the cases. Neither has religious affinity guaranteed strategic alignment with Kabul nor has it now delivered political ascendancy in Dhaka as Bangladesh’s electorate has signalled that while religion remains integral to social life, it does not automatically translate into foreign policy alignment.

For Pakistan, this presents a dilemma since Dhaka’s determination to pursue a “Bangladesh First” policy offers limited space for the kind of ideological leverage that Islamabad sought to cultivate.

While Islamabad’s Bangladesh policy after 2024 was built on the hope that a moment of political flux could be shaped into strategic realignment, its engagement will therefore need recalibration and for any pragmatism to sustain, the relations will have to be transactional and grounded in mutual interest rather than religious solidarity.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Co-Author: Abu Obaidha Arin (He is a student from Bangladesh studying at Delhi University. He is a Bangladesh observer)

Sustained Jamaat rule could also exhaust anti-India sentiment by exposing governance failures, internal contradictions, and economic stress.

As Bangladesh approaches a decisive national election, the dominant assumption across political camps is not stability but an absolute turbulence. Irrespective of who wins, the post-election phase is likely to be marked by extreme confrontation, street mobilisation, and institutional paralysis.

From India’s perspective, this election is not merely about Dhaka’s internal power transition; it is about the direction of Bangladesh’s statehood, its ideological trajectory, and the security implications for India’s eastern flank.

The Ground Reality: BNP’s Electoral Advantage

If a broadly fair election takes place, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its alliance remain electorally better positioned. Based on constituency-level dynamics, BNP could plausibly secure around 220 seats, driven by organisational depth, street muscle power, informal financing networks like Hawala, and a long-standing vote bank.

Jamaat-e-Islami, despite improved coordination, better organisational capabilities, and administrative reach, lacks comparable grassroots strength, social acceptance, and credible candidates, particularly in urban centres like the capital, Dhaka. Even where Jamaat has attempted voter engineering, such as shifting large voter blocs across constituencies, it remains structurally weaker than BNP in terms of coercive capacity and public legitimacy.

The administration itself appears aware of this reality. Bureaucratic behaviour already suggests a strong hedging towards a BNP-led future, which limits the effectiveness of Jamaat-centric electoral engineering. Smaller players such as the NCP, technically an offshoot of the Jamaat, are, at present, marginal, possibly securing only isolated victories like Cumilla-4, without national impact.

Yet electoral victory does not equate to political stability.

Scenario One: BNP Wins, But the Street Erupts

A BNP victory is unlikely to bring calm. The immediate trigger for unrest would be any attempt by the outgoing regime to retain influence through a “Gono Parishad” or all-party interim arrangement for 180 working days, or through continued authority for figures like Muhammad Yunus to push a July Charter or constitutional referendum.

BNP supporters, and crucially, large sections of the general-public, are unlikely to accept such arrangements after an electoral mandate.

This would lead to a direct confrontation between the state apparatus and BNP’s Street power. While this clash may temporarily benefit forces seeking to re-enter political relevance, it carries a deeper risk: Jamaat’s silent expansion under a BNP government.

Historically, Jamaat has thrived not by leading governments but by embedding itself within them, leveraging ideology, street cadres, and foreign networks while avoiding direct accountability.

From India’s perspective, this is the most dangerous long-term trajectory. A BNP government under constant pressure may tolerate Jamaat’s growth to maintain street balance.

As anti-India rhetoric rises, often as a unifying political tool, so too does the risk of cross-border radicalisation, revival of dormant terror networks, and gradual erosion of Bangladesh’s secular foundations. This is not short-term chaos but a slow destabilisation, which is far harder to counter.

Scenario Two: Jamaat Engineers a Victory, Short-Term Fire, Long-Term Clarity

If electoral engineering succeeds and Jamaat emerges dominant, instability would be immediate and severe. BNP would mobilise its full street strength against what it would frame as an illegitimate, radical takeover. The resulting confrontation, between Jamaat-aligned state forces and BNP supporters, would fracture the political system.

Paradoxically, this scenario, though more violent in the short term, may be strategically clearer. Lines would be sharply drawn between the legacy forces of 1971 and openly pro-Pakistan, Islamist formations.

BNP, weakened by repression and internal strain, would be forced to recalibrate, potentially seeking reconciliation with secular forces it previously sidelined. In such a polarised environment, Awami League would likely re-emerge over time as the only cohesive national alternative.

For India, this scenario carries immediate security risks but fewer illusions. New Delhi tends to manage overt threats better than ambiguous ones.

A Jamaat-led dispensation would likely compel India to harden its eastern security posture, strengthen intelligence coordination, and work more openly with global partners. Importantly, sustained Jamaat rule could also exhaust anti-India sentiment by exposing governance failures, internal contradictions, and economic stress.

India’s Core Interest: Stability Without Radicalisation

In the present circumstances, where the Awami League has been manipulatively debarred from electoral participation by the interim authority, India’s primary concern is no longer which party governs Bangladesh. The overriding question is whether Bangladesh can remain a stable, secular, and non-hostile neighbour.

A prolonged phase of instability combined with the deepening institutionalisation of Islamist politics represents the gravest threat. While short-term unrest is costly, it remains manageable if it culminates in ideological clarity and an eventual institutional reset. Long-term destabilisation, however, would steadily erode state capacity and regional security.

What makes the current moment especially dangerous is the growing footprint of the most radical sections operating out of Pakistan, increasingly intersecting with ISIS-linked ideological and operational ecosystems, and sustained by continuous external patronage, financial, digital, and organisational. These networks do not merely seek political leverage; they aim to reshape Bangladesh’s ideological orientation itself.

If left unchecked, Bangladesh risks evolving into a new and more complex Pakistan-type challenge for India, with greater unpredictability, higher levels of urban penetration, technologically adept radical actors, and a far deeper integration of extremism into civil society than India has historically faced from Islamabad.

For New Delhi, this transforms Bangladesh from a familiar diplomatic and security equation into the most difficult neighbour to manage in the long run. The threat is no longer confined to cross-border militancy but extends to radicalisation pipelines, information warfare, and the slow hollowing out of secular political space.

India must therefore resist reactive diplomacy and prepare for multiple contingencies: quietly reinforcing border security, intensifying surveillance of radical networks, countering transnational extremist financing, and maintaining calibrated engagement with all non-extremist political forces inside Bangladesh.

The months ahead will test not only Bangladesh’s democratic resilience, but also India’s strategic patience and foresight. The election may determine a government. The aftermath will determine the region’s future.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

“Indian interference” has since become a reflexive explanation for Nepal’s recurring instability, invoked across party lines.

“India interferes in our politics” has become South Asia’s most reusable political slogan. It works in Ottawa, too, apparently. When governments face domestic anger, legitimacy crises, or inconvenient security failures, blaming the neighborhood giant is an easy shortcut: it turns messy internal problems into a clean external conspiracy.

From Canada to Bangladesh, Nepal to Pakistan, governments and political actors facing domestic crises often invoke Indian meddling as an explanation for internal instability. The narrative is emotionally powerful and politically useful. Yet it is frequently detached from evidence, conflating diplomatic proximity, diaspora politics, and regional asymmetry with covert interference.

India is not a passive actor in its neighborhood, nor is it immune from scrutiny. But the prevailing discourse often obscures more than it reveals. Allegations of interference are often employed as political tools, rather than analytical conclusions.

Canada and the Expansion of “Interference” Narratives

The most serious allegations against India have emerged not from South Asia but from Canada. Following the 2023 killing of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament that Canadian agencies were pursuing “credible allegations” linking Indian agents to the murder. The episode escalated into diplomatic expulsions and a public rupture between Ottawa and New Delhi.

In 2024, Canada’s intelligence agencies and law enforcement further alleged intimidation and threats against members of the Sikh diaspora. The issue deepened when the US Department of Justice announced charges in a foiled plot to assassinate a US-based Sikh separatist leader, alleging involvement by an “Indian government employee.”

These are not rhetorical claims; they involve legal processes, indictments, and intelligence assessments.

Many allegations crumbled under scrutiny and revealed gaps in evidence and alternative motivations. In the Canadian case, while intelligence from allies like the US supported initial claims, India’s denials and calls for evidence have highlighted inconsistencies in Ottawa’s handling of the investigation.

Reports suggest Trudeau’s accusations were timed to bolster domestic support amid a political crisis, with Sikh diaspora politics playing a key role. A Canadian inquiry into foreign interference noted transnational repression concerns but emphasized that claims against India “likely only scratch the surface,” without conclusive proof of state-directed killings. Such a narrative ignores Canada’s historical leniency toward Sikh separatists, whom India views as terrorists.

For India, the right response is not automatic denial, but careful distinction. When allegations involve criminal investigations or trusted partner governments, they should be addressed through legal and diplomatic processes, not emotional reactions.

However, using such cases to claim that India is systematically interfering in other countries’ politics stretches the evidence and turns isolated incidents into an exaggerated narrative rather than a fact-based assessment.

Bangladesh and the Politics of Scapegoating

In Bangladesh, accusations of Indian interference function differently. They are less about covert action and more about political symbolism.

After the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, Dhaka formally asked India to stop the former prime minister from making “false statements” from Indian territory, accusing New Delhi of enabling political destabilization. India responded that Hasina was speaking in a personal capacity, not as an Indian proxy.

This exchange illustrates a recurring pattern. India’s long-standing partnership with Hasina’s Awami League—particularly on counterterrorism and border security—delivered tangible outcomes, including reduced insurgent violence in India’s northeast.

But that same proximity fostered a perception that India had “chosen sides” in Bangladesh’s domestic politics. Once Hasina was removed, that perception hardened into accusation.

Bangladesh’s internal polarization did not originate in Delhi. It emerged from contested elections, economic stress, and institutional mistrust. Yet anti-India rhetoric quickly became a mobilizing frame, redirecting public anger outward.

Analysts have noted how Bangladeshi media and political actors amplified claims of Indian involvement without substantiation, especially during periods of unrest. The interference narrative thus serves as a domestic function. It externalizes responsibility and simplifies complex political failures.

India’s problem in Bangladesh is less about what it does and more about how its actions are perceived. As the bigger and more powerful neighbor, almost any Indian involvement is viewed with suspicion.

This means India needs careful, disciplined diplomacy rather than stepping back entirely. By backing institutions instead of individual leaders and staying visibly neutral during political transitions, India may not stop all accusations, but it can make them harder to sustain.

Nepal and Pakistan: Interference as Political Memory and Doctrine

Nepal offers a cautionary example of how interference narratives can calcify into national memory. The 2015–16 blockade period, which coincided with Nepal’s constitutional crisis, remains widely interpreted as an Indian attempt to coerce Kathmandu, despite India’s denial of imposing an official blockade. The political impact has outlasted the logistical reality.

“Indian interference” has since become a reflexive explanation for Nepal’s recurring instability, invoked across party lines.

Nepal’s case underscores how perception can outweigh intent. Once hardship becomes associated with external pressure, interference claims gain emotional permanence. Every subsequent crisis is filtered through that precedent, regardless of current Indian behavior.

New Delhi’s room for maneuver shrinks not because of action, but because of accumulated distrust.

In Pakistan, allegations of Indian interference are closer to state doctrine. Islamabad routinely accuses New Delhi of backing separatists in Balochistan and fomenting internal unrest—claims India rejects. The arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav is frequently cited as proof of Indian covert activity, even as the case also involves disputed confessions and international legal proceedings over consular access.

Here, interference claims serve strategic purposes: internationalizing domestic insurgency, justifying security policies, and reinforcing national narratives of external threat. Whether evidence exists becomes secondary to narrative building, and the accusation itself remains the objective.

Separating Reality from Rhetoric

What links these cases is not Indian behavior alone, but structural asymmetry. India’s size, economy, diaspora, and proximity create an unavoidable influence. The misconception lies in collapsing influence, alignment, and interference into a single category.

Diplomatic support for a government, hosting exiled leaders, or prioritizing security cooperation can all be portrayed as meddling by domestic opponents. Bangladesh’s post-Hasina politics demonstrate how quickly perceived alignment becomes alleged intervention. This does not absolve India of responsibility.

Where allegations are backed by legal processes and allied intelligence—as in North America—India must engage seriously. But where claims function primarily as political theater, responding defensively risks reinforcing the narrative.

Debunking misconceptions does not mean dismissing accountability. It means restoring distinctions between influence and coercion, diplomacy and subversion, perception and proof. India’s most effective response lies not in public rebuttals, but in consistent restraint and seriousness when credible allegations arise.

In a region defined by asymmetry, India cannot eliminate suspicion. The goal is not to win every argument about interference but to prevent the accusation itself from becoming a destabilizing weapon in South Asia’s fragile political landscape.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

But I shall never forget my people, especially at a time when the rise of extremist ideologies and violent political and religious persecution puts Bangladesh at serious risk of a period of decline from which it will take many years to recover.

Recently, the unelected Interim Government of Bangladesh, headed by Muhammad Yunus, announced that elections would be held on February 12th, 2026. The country’s largest secular political party, Awami League however, has been eliminated from the political process through violent persecution – including numerous lynchings, unjust imprisonment and torture – and arbitrary administrative measures.

This troubling chaos and political vacuum has given extremist political parties with a fanatical religious ideology – the Jamaat-e-Islami in particular – free rein to assume power, in the absence of a secular counterpart that historically stood against and prevented its rise. This alarming situation will inevitably give rise to years of instability and serious threats to regional security. It is imperative that the international community, and the United States in particular, ensure that any elections are free, fair, and all-inclusive.

As many human rights organizations have reported, since the overthrow of the constitutional government in August 2024, there have been numerous violent attacks against Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and other religious minorities and their places of worship. These reports document patterns of collective punishment in districts associated with secular and opposition political parties, and districts with a sizable minority population.

Several opposition political figures, including myself, have been sentenced to death in widely-condemned trials before the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, and there is a serious fear that arbitrary executions may follow.

Ironically, the Tribunal was created in 1973 to prosecute the collaborators who assisted the Pakistani army in the genocide during the 1971 War of Independence under the leadership of my father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, during which some 3 million Bangladeshi civilians were murdered and countless women and girls became victims of horrific sexual violence. These are the same political forces that are now seeking a come-back with the apparent support of the Interim Government.

When I was elected in 2008, Bangladesh was a hotbed of extremist forces and terrorism. In its tenure of 16 years, my government worked, under enormous pressure, to keep these fanatical movements contained and to protect the secular constitution of the country.

As a result, Bangladesh saw long periods of stability and unprecedented economic prosperity that witnessed an astonishing 500% increase in per capita GDP, lifting millions out of poverty. This progress was achieved against the backdrop of several plots to assassinate myself and my sole surviving family member, my sister Sheikh Rehana. All of our parents and siblings, including our 10-year old brother, were murdered in cold blood in 1975 by the same political forces that are today seeking power.

Extremist ideologies rarely vanish; they wait for opportunities created by political exclusion, institutional weakening and social fear. Today, all of the guardrails that once constrained them have started to crumble. But I have arisen from this valley of death before and will do so again, with one conviction: that it is my sacred duty to protect the democratic rights of Bangladesh and to promote the dignity of its people. I will continue to stand for this struggle no matter who tries to silence me.

Invariably, during this period of extraordinary prosperity, mistakes were also made, and there are many lessons to be learned on the historical path of progress. In particular, during 2024, amidst a campaign of hate propaganda, misinformation and violent insurrection, numerous protestors and police officers were killed.

I had immediately ordered an impartial inquiry to establish responsibility for these tragic deaths, which the Interim Government has abandoned in favour of politicized sham trials and death sentences, while at the same time offering immunity to those who instigated the violence. The purpose of the agitators was simply the unconstitutional overthrow of the Government, which resulted in my exile to India on August 5th, 2024, and the current predicament.

But I shall never forget my people, especially at a time when the rise of extremist ideologies and violent political and religious persecution puts Bangladesh at serious risk of a period of decline from which it will take many years to recover.

The exclusion of the secular Awami League from forthcoming elections is inextricably tied to the rise of extremists, who present a dire threat not only to the people of Bangladesh, but also to the United States and its allies, as a once stable, secular, and prosperous country descends into a source of perpetual instability, decline and terrorism.

Bangladesh, with a population of 170 million, is situated in a vital strategic region, at the centre of the Bay of Bengal, between India and Myanmar. If it falls in the hands of extremists and their global network, its fallout will carry consequences far beyond its borders.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Seen from such a lens, Asim Munir’s use of analogies like ‘dump truck’ or the ‘railway engine’ are not harmless political theatre.

Pakistan’s leaders, both political and military, have long relied on self-serving metaphors to shape the domestic sociopolitical sphere and frame their country’s place in the broader region. Often delivered with a dramaturgical embellishment, these analogies do more than reflect insecurity or national mythmaking. They reveal a deeper strategic mindset in which Pakistan sees value in disruption, leverage through instability, and the cultivation of terrorism as a tool of statecraft.

The latest examples come from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has historically dominated the country’s political and security architecture. It started with Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s interaction with expatriates in Florida, United States, in August this year, wherein he deployed a comparison that captured headlines for its brazenness. “India is a shining Mercedes coming on a highway like a Ferrari,” he said. “But we are a dump truck full of gravel. If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”

On its surface, such remarks appeared to emphasize resilience: that Pakistan as a lumbering truck may not be glamorous, but it can endure any difficulty and overcome any obstacle. Yet the real significance of this ironical analogy lies elsewhere. It implies that Pakistan retains the capability as well as readiness to cause strategic disruption, even at great cost to itself, and in doing so shape regional outcomes. The metaphor glorifies collision as an equalizer. It suggests that while India surges economically and diplomatically, Pakistan’s relevance lies in its ability to destabilize.

A parallel metaphor that is being increasingly used by the country’s political and military elite describes Pakistan as a “railway engine”, that is portrays it on a slow, traditional, yet persistent mode of progress. The image is meant to frame Pakistan as foundational to South Asian stability, chugging along in contrast to India’s sleek modernization. Implicit in this imagery is the claim that the region’s momentum, direction, and safety can still be both set and derailed by Pakistan’s choices.

Such analogies may seem rhetorical to common masses and yet contain within them a longstanding doctrine of purposeful disruption that Pakistan has employed in the last several decades. It is based on its decades-old strategic worldview wherein it has consistently valorized confrontation, framing India as an existential threat, and more domestically more significant objective of positioning proxy-terrorism as a legitimate extension of state power. 

Such a propagandistic rhetoric has found currency amidst Asim Munir’s sweeping consolidation of authority through constitutional amendments to expanded control over the judiciary, nuclear command, and internal security. This narrative push is designed to reinforce his martial narrative that Pakistan may be economically battered, politically unstable, and diplomatically isolated, but it remains capable of inflicting damage that forces global attention.

As such, while Pakistan’s establishment may dress its messaging in fresh metaphors, the underlying doctrine has barely evolved. Since the 26/11 attacks by ISI supported Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists in Mumbai, there has been little substantive reckoning within Pakistan about the use of terrorist groups as strategic assets. If anything, the rhetoric of state officials in the years since reveals continuity, not change.

It should be noted that there has been consensus within Pakistani establishment, as exposed by the statements from senior retired generals, political leaders, and religious ideologues, who often reiterate that proxy terrorism can be a “force multiplier” against India. Such an argument has been repeatedly framed as asymmetric necessity given that since Pakistan cannot match New Delhi conventionally, so it must leverage “non-state actors” to disrupt India’s rise even as its own economy falters. It explains why and how terrorist groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed have been normalized within the socio-political discourse of the country by portraying terrorists as instruments of pressure than what they are: terrorists.

This mindset is reflected not only in Pakistan’s reluctance to prosecute figures like Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar, but also in its sustained tolerance of groups that openly espouse cross-border terrorism sold as so-called jihad. And the danger of such rhetoric is not abstract as it has recurrently translated into violence that has spilled far beyond India’s borders. Be it 26/11 attacks of 2008 in India or the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, these showcased how such a mentality that the Pakistani establishment patronises can have devastating human costs.

Just as the 9/11 attacks targeted symbols of American openness and global leadership which the world forever, 26/11 targeted India’s cosmopolitan identity to sow internal discord and disrupt its global economic rise. Therefore, should Pakistan’s leadership continue to present disruption as strategic leverage, as they are doing currently, the risk of mass-casualty attacks would remain unacceptably high.

Seen from such a lens, Asim Munir’s use of analogies like ‘dump truck’ or the ‘railway engine’ are not harmless political theatre. It is a reflection of a national mindset of a country of mismanaged economy, which is unable to compete with rising India in any domain, sees strategic relevance in the threat of sabotage. It is a worldview that sees regional equilibrium not in growth or cooperation but in managed instability maintained through terrorist proxies. And that worldview does not confine risk to South Asia, which is why Pakistan’s analogies matter. 

In such a scenario, while India cannot afford any complacency, it makes it implicit on the international community to acknowledge that South Asian terrorism, especially when linked to state sponsorship like Pakistan’s role, poses a threat transcending national borders.

Nevertheless, two lessons stand out. Firstly, there needs to be greater transnational intelligence synergy at the international level. For instance, given that countries like India, the United States, the EU, Israel, Southeast Asian partners, and Gulf states, have a shared interest in tackling terrorism, they would need to bolster real-time intelligence exchange, establish joint tracking of financing networks, and coordinated monitoring of extremist propaganda.

Secondly, diplomatic isolation of terror-sponsoring frameworks is no longer optional. The world must explicitly differentiate between Pakistan as a nation and Pakistan’s security apparatus as a destabilizing actor and shape policy accordingly. This is because civilian government is a façade in that country as it is overwhelmingly dominated by the military establishment. 

Therefore, the “dump truck” and “railway engine” analogies may have been meant to project endurance, but they expose a darker truth of Pakistan’s military leadership’s outdated belief that regional power can be exercised through disruption and not development. Unless such a mindset is confronted at political, diplomatic, and strategic levels, the international community should rest assured that its risks will not be borne by India alone. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

This duality—preaching unity while practicing duplicity—has become Pakistan’s diplomatic hallmark.

When the Taliban stormed into Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan’s powerful intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, appeared at the Serena Hotel and assured journalists, “Everything will be okay.”

His confident smile captured Islamabad’s belief that decades of strategic maneuvering had finally paid off. Pakistan, long accused of nurturing the Taliban, assumed it would now wield decisive influence over its western neighbor.

Four years later, those hopes have turned to ashes. The Taliban’s rise, once hailed in Islamabad as a geopolitical triumph, has become a source of profound insecurity and humiliation.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), emboldened by its ideological kin in Kabul, has unleashed a deadly insurgency across Pakistan’s tribal belt. Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers have been killed in cross-border raids. The Taliban, despite Pakistan’s past support, has refused to curb the TTP.

The so-called “strategic depth” has instead exposed Pakistan’s strategic shallowness. A state that once boasted of controlling its proxies now finds itself hostage to them. The illusion of regional mastery has dissolved into a grim reality: Pakistan is isolated, insecure, and rapidly losing credibility.

Weaponizing Refugees

Having failed to tame the Taliban, Pakistan turned its frustration toward Afghan civilians. In October 2023, Islamabad launched the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP), targeting nearly 1.7 million undocumented Afghans. For decades, Afghan refugees had lived, worked, and raised families in Pakistan. Suddenly, they became scapegoats for Islamabad’s security failures.

By mid-2025, more than 600,000 Afghans had been deported in what international observers described as one of South Asia’s largest forced repatriations in decades. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch chronicled chilling stories of police harassment, arbitrary detentions, and family separations.

Pakistan justified the campaign as a counterterrorism measure, accusing Afghan refugees of harboring TTP militants. But analysts saw it differently: an act of political retribution against the Taliban regime. Kabul condemned the deportations as a breach of international law and accused Islamabad of deepening Afghanistan’s humanitarian catastrophe.

This was more than just a border dispute—it was a symptom of Pakistan’s broader malaise. A state that once prided itself on being a refuge for the oppressed had turned into a place of fear and hostility. The moral cost of Islamabad’s Afghan policy was now unmistakable.

Airstrikes and Escalation

Pakistan’s response extended beyond deportations. Under the guise of pursuing TTP sanctuaries, it began conducting airstrikes inside Afghan territory.

In April 2022, bombings in Khost and Kunar killed 47 civilians, mostly women and children. Similar attacks followed in March and December 2024, targeting Paktika and Khost. In January 2025, fresh strikes were launched along the volatile Durand Line. Over a hundred civilians have died since 2021, according to regional monitors.

Each operation fuelled anger and anti-Pakistan protests across Afghanistan. The Taliban government condemned the attacks as violations of sovereignty, accusing Pakistan of hiding its failures behind a counterterrorism narrative.

By 2025, Pakistan’s western frontier was once again aflame—only this time, without American troops to share the blame. The Afghan war that Islamabad once believed it had outsourced had come home, exacting both human and diplomatic costs.

Diplomacy as Deception

The crisis reached a symbolic peak in September 2025, when Islamabad hosted the “Towards Unity and Trust” conference under the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.

Despite the event’s conciliatory title, the Taliban government was conspicuously excluded. Instead, the gathering featured anti-Taliban activists and politicians, turning what was billed as a dialogue into an exercise in diplomatic provocation.

Just days later, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif labeled Afghanistan an “enemy state”—a stunning reversal from Pakistan’s earlier rhetoric of “brotherhood.”

This diplomatic whiplash mirrors a deeper inconsistency at the heart of Pakistan’s foreign policy. It speaks of a nation perpetually caught between ambition and insecurity, between Islamic solidarity and realpolitik.

Even its domestic realities now echo this hypocrisy.

In early October 2025, a story broke that underscored how deeply investor confidence has eroded under the current administration. Out of 23 oil and gas exploration blocks offered for bidding, no local or foreign bids were received for 22. The only bid came from Mari Gas, and even that was for a small block with negligible output.

Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra, Pakistan’s opposition leader, wrote “investors know this is an illegitimate govt,” saying no company—foreign or domestic—was willing to invest in a country “without rule of law.” He accused the government of driving away foreign direct investment through arbitrary governance, economic mismanagement, and political repression.

This episode is emblematic of Pakistan’s larger credibility crisis. When even domestic energy firms shy away from state-backed ventures, the problem is not market dynamics—it is a collapse of trust. The same lack of accountability that defines Pakistan’s regional duplicity now poisons its economic foundations.

The Iran Paradox and the Palestine Hypocrisy

Pakistan’s double-dealing extends far beyond its Afghan misadventure.

In June 2025, Islamabad publicly condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, declaring solidarity with Tehran. Yet, only days earlier, Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir had met privately with Donald Trump, reportedly discussing “regional stability.” In a surreal twist, Pakistan went on to nominate Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, effectively undercutting its supposed alignment with Iran.

This duality—preaching unity while practicing duplicity—has become Pakistan’s diplomatic hallmark.

The same contradictions stain its stance on Palestine. While Pakistani leaders have long professed unwavering support for the Palestinian cause, history tells another story. During Black September 1970, Brigadier Zia ul-Haq, later Pakistan’s military ruler, helped Jordan crush the Palestine Liberation Organization, a massacre that claimed thousands of lives.

In July 2025, Pakistan awarded the Nishan-e-Imtiaz to U.S. CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, despite his role in coordinating American military support for Israel during its Gaza operations.

At the UN General Assembly’s 80th session, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Daniel Rosen, head of the American Jewish Congress, signaling a quiet but unmistakable outreach to pro-Israel circles.

For a country that brands itself the guardian of Muslim causes, the hypocrisy is striking. From Amman to Gaza, Pakistan’s leaders have consistently traded principle for expediency.

A Consistent Inconsistency

Across every theater—Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, and even its own energy sector—a single pattern emerges: Pakistan’s promises collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

It seeks influence in Kabul but alienates Afghans through bombings and deportations. It pledges brotherhood with Tehran while courting Washington. It proclaims solidarity with Palestine while decorating America’s military commanders. And now, it claims to welcome foreign investment while creating an environment so lawless that even local companies refuse to bid.

In the end, Pakistan’s gravest betrayal is not of its neighbors, but of itself. The erosion of credibility abroad mirrors the decay of governance at home. As investors flee, allies distance themselves, and insurgents advance, the message is clear: a nation that manipulates every alliance eventually stands alone.

For decades, Pakistan’s generals and politicians have built policies on the illusion of control. The Afghan gamble was meant to cement regional influence; instead, it has exposed a state adrift, distrusted by friends and foes alike.

The “everything will be okay” optimism of 2021 now rings hollow. For Pakistan, everything is decidedly not okay—and the world, finally, has stopped believing its promises.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.