276th Corps Commanders Conference highlights unifi…

By Saman Aftab Since the world has deliberated a lot to find a workable solution of plastic pollution, it is imperative to underscore the significance of most promising eco- friendly solutions to curb the plastic menace. The non-degradable nature of synthetic plastics is contaminating terrestrial and aquatic eco systems. Moreover, the disastrous effects of microplastics (extremely tiny plastic pieces) on human nervous system development, hormonal balance and reproductive system are becoming evident with scientific research. Hence, plastic pollution has become a grave concern not only for the environment but also for human health. It is a well-documented fact that the current strategies to deal with disposing of synthetic plastic are not sufficient to get rid of this man made pollution. Landfilling is littering the water bodies as the leachate escaping from the landfills causes the contamination of water. Similarly, incineration (burning of plastic waste) leads to air pollution in turn causing several health hazard in the surroundings. Even, recycling of plastic seems to be highly expensive when dealing with enormous amounts of mix plastic wastes in developing countries like Pakistan. However, as a bioremediative strategy, biodegradation holds promising prospects. Biodegradation of plastic simply means the use of microorganisms (including bacteria and fungi etc.) that have the capability of degrading petroleum based plastic in such a manner that would render the synthetic plastic degraded in the environment. Such microbial strains are present ubiquitously in those environments where plastics are dumped such as landfills. The researchers have not only isolated such strains but also managed to produce genetically modified bacteria/fungi capable of easily degrading synthetic plastics. Even the microbial enzymes of such microorganisms have been employed for such purposes as to study the intricacies of the biodegradation process only to make it more effective in the future. Pakistan is one of the countries where the use and misuse of plastic allows the environment to host such microbial strains capable of decomposing plastic in abundance. Having keen interest in this topic, I myself have isolated and identified several bacterial and fungal strains in my research work of MPhil titled “Biodegradation of plastics by locally isolated microorganisms”. Moreover, I have contributed a chapter on “Role of microbes in microplastic removal and its health effect on human health” in a book titled “Advanced treatment technologies for the removal of microplastics in wastewater”. Similarly, I have authored another chapter on “The role of microbial enzymes in the degradation of plastics- a sustainable tool for waste management” in an Elsevier book titled “Plastic waste valorization”. Hence, in my humble opinion, the optimization of biodegradation process can be exploited in an industrial setup where synthetic plastics would be degraded in the same manner as biological/microbiological systems are used to treat industrial wastewater. The scientists around the world are working day and night to come up with innovative strategies of plastic waste removal without deteriorating our environment. China, for example is working to convert mix plastic waste into hydrogen fuel but that is too expensive for the time being. In our country we hear about the banning of single use plastic specifically polyethylene shopping bags from our policy makers on and off. However, its enforcement never takes into effect. In fact, since hundreds and thousands of people are associated with the industry of plastic production, it is not wise to disrupt this supply chain abruptly without providing people with other feasible options. The introduction of biodegradable plastic as an alternative is overrated. The biodegradable plastic has shown to last much longer in the environment than what it promises and its production cost makes it too expensive to replace conventional plastic in the market. Whereas, Biodegradation of plastic still offers much hope to tackle plastic pollution. The dearth of resources and governmental assistance is the only hindrance, otherwise Pakistan has the potential to streamline an effective plastic waste management plan pivoted around biodegradation and become a global leader in this regard. I request the authorities to pay attention and incentivize researchers to explore this area of research for national good in particular and international benefit in general. Even if the unlikely consensus on plastic production cap is reached, still the world will need to streamline the process of plastic waste management. And, out of all plastic waste management techniques including incineration, landfilling and recycling, biodegradation is the most ecofriendly process of getting rid of hazardous plastics. The governments all across the globe must encourage their researchers to explore plastic degrading microorganism and optimize the process of biodegradation to get effective outcomes. The writer has done MPhil in Microbiology from GCU Lahore

The world may not have officially entered an artificial intelligence war, but it is already living inside an AI power struggle. The United States and China are competing to control the technologies that may define economic growth, military strength, scientific discovery and political influence for decades. The weapons in this contest are not only missiles or drones. They are advanced computer chips, data centres, algorithms, research talent, cloud infrastructure, global standards and access to enormous quantities of data. Both countries present their ambitions as beneficial to humanity. Yet their policies increasingly speak the language of winning, leadership and strategic advantage. America’s AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, explicitly describes AI development as a race the United States must win. Its strategy is built around accelerating innovation, expanding domestic infrastructure and exporting American technology, models and standards to allies. China, meanwhile, is embedding AI across manufacturing, science, education, public services and governance through its “AI Plus” initiative. By 2027, it aims for AI agents and new intelligent devices to reach a penetration rate exceeding 70 percent in key areas. This is not a simple competition between one country that innovates and another that follows. According to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index, the United States produced 59 notable AI models in 2025, compared with China’s 35. However, China led in the volume of AI publications, citations and patent grants. By March 2026, the performance difference between the strongest American and Chinese models had narrowed to only 2.7 percent.  The race is therefore real, close and rapidly intensifying. At its centre lies the semiconductor. Advanced AI requires enormous computing power, and that power depends on specialised chips. Washington has repeatedly restricted China’s access to advanced processors and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment, arguing that such technologies could support military modernisation. Although some licensing policies have changed, chip access remains a tool of strategic pressure. China has responded by investing in domestic chips, efficient models, industrial applications and alternative technological ecosystems. What began as commercial competition is producing two increasingly separate AI worlds. Countries may eventually be pressured to choose whose chips, clouds, platforms, security systems and technological standards they will use. This is where the Global South enters the battlefield, not necessarily as a combatant, but as a market, data source and zone of influence. America wants allied countries to build on American AI technology. China presents its approach as more open to international cooperation and has announced training opportunities, AI application centres and capacity-building programmes for developing nations. In July 2026, China also promoted a new World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization and promised 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing countries over five years. Both approaches offer genuine opportunities. Developing countries need computing access, technical training, investment and affordable digital infrastructure. But assistance can also create dependence. A country that relies entirely on foreign AI systems may surrender control over its data, public services, information environment and national decision-making. The most dangerous part of the contest is its military dimension. The United States is expanding AI use across its national-security institutions and armed forces. China’s military strategy has been described by the US Department of Defense as moving towards “intelligentized warfare,” in which AI supports surveillance, command systems, autonomous platforms and battlefield decisions. China publicly maintains that military AI must remain under human control and says it does not seek an AI arms race. These public commitments are important, but declarations are not enforceable safeguards. AI can analyse satellite images, identify possible targets, guide autonomous drones, generate military plans and conduct cyber operations at speeds humans cannot match. Speed may appear to make defence more effective, but it can also make war less controllable. A flawed system could misidentify a civilian vehicle, interpret routine military movement as an attack or produce a false warning during a nuclear crisis. When two rival powers fear falling behind, caution begins to look like weakness. Each side accelerates because it assumes the other is accelerating. This is how an innovation race can become an arms race. The threat is not limited to physical weapons. AI-generated propaganda, deepfakes and automated influence campaigns could manufacture speeches, create false evidence of attacks or provoke public anger before facts can be verified. The United Nations has warned that AI-enabled cyberattacks can damage critical infrastructure within minutes, while fabricated audio and video can intensify political tension and even trigger diplomatic crises. Humanity should not be forced to choose between American technological dominance and Chinese technological dominance. It should demand a third option: internationally governed AI development centred on human survival and dignity. Life-and-death decisions must remain under meaningful human control. AI should never independently authorise nuclear action or select human targets without accountable human judgement. Countries need binding rules for autonomous weapons, military AI audits, crisis hotlines and mandatory reporting of serious AI failures. The International Committee of the Red Cross recommends prohibiting unpredictable autonomous weapons and systems designed to target people without sufficient human control. Civilian AI also requires cooperation. Scientific research, medical discoveries and climate technologies should not become inaccessible simply because they emerge on the wrong side of a geopolitical divide. Developing countries need a genuine place in global rule-making, not invitations to choose a technological master. America and China may believe they are competing to own the future. But the future does not belong exclusively to either of them. It belongs to the billions of people whose jobs, security, privacy, education and understanding of truth will be transformed by decisions they never helped make. The real victory will not be producing the most powerful machine. It will be ensuring that, when the race ends, humanity is still in control.

Pakistan has debated the elimination of riba—a Quranic term subjected to judicial interpretation and theological discourse but still lacking a precise statutory definition—for decades. Judicial decisions have been delivered, commissions constituted, reports prepared, appeals filed and withdrawn, deadlines announced and Islamic banking expanded. The central intellectual and legislative task, however, remains incomplete. We have not developed a precise, comprehensive and operational definition of the economic practices that must be prohibited. This omission is not merely academic. No financial system can be reconstructed around a prohibition that is expressed only as a moral declaration. A law [Who will draft Riba Prohibition Law? Minute Mirror, April 7, 2026] must identify the transaction, the prohibited increment, the parties affected, the substance to be examined and the consequences of violation. It must also distinguish an unlawful return on money from lawful earnings arising from trade, labour, services, ownership and commercial risk. The first requirement of a serious programme for the elimination of riba is clarity. Riba is commonly translated as interest/usury. This translation is useful but incomplete. Modern interest is one of its most important manifestations, particularly where a lender advances money and contractually claims an additional amount merely because the borrower is allowed time to repay. The prohibition, however, cannot be confined to instruments carrying the label “interest”. Nor can every commercial gain, deferred price or fixed payment be declared riba. The distinction lies in the legal and economic substance of the transaction. Where money is advanced as a loan and the lender is guaranteed an increase over the principal, the return does not arise from ownership of a productive asset, provision of a service, participation in business or exposure to commercial loss. It arises from the loan itself and the passage of time. The borrower must pay the increase whether the borrowed funds generate profit, produce loss, meet a medical emergency or finance bare survival. This asymmetry lies at the heart of the problem. Capital is protected; return is predetermined; risk is shifted to the borrower. Trade operates differently. A trader purchases or produces an asset, assumes the risks of ownership, incurs costs, faces the possibility of loss and sells the asset at a profit. The profit is not earned merely because money has been unavailable to another person for a period. It is connected with property, exchange, enterprise and market risk. Lease income also rests upon a different foundation. An owner permits another person to use an asset while retaining the liabilities associated with ownership. Rent represents consideration for the use of the asset. The arrangement becomes questionable when the supposed owner bears no meaningful ownership risk and the entire structure is merely a cash loan disguised through documents. Partnership profit has another character. Partners combine capital, work, expertise or enterprise. Profit is divided according to an agreed formula permitted by the applicable juristic principles, while financial loss follows the capital placed at risk. A partner cannot lawfully guarantee himself a fixed return upon capital and compel the other partner to bear every commercial loss. These distinctions are recognised, with variations, across the major Muslim schools. They differ on matters such as the permissible relationship between capital contribution and profit-sharing ratios, conditions attached to contracts, possession, agency and the allocation of particular risks. They do not treat every profit as riba. Nor do they permit a partner to convert genuine risk participation into a guaranteed return on money. A modern Prohibition of Riba law must preserve these distinctions. The difficulty is that contemporary finance has developed techniques through which a loan can be divided into several formally separate contracts. An institution may purchase an asset for a few moments, sell it to the customer at a marked-up price, obtain comprehensive security, transfer every economic risk to the customer and calculate its return by reference to the prevailing interest rate. The transaction may satisfy documentary requirements while reproducing the economic substance of conventional lending. The institution receives a predetermined return; the customer bears the commercial risk; and the institution’s temporary ownership exists mainly to legitimise the financing charge. This does not mean that murabaha, ijarah or diminishing musharakah are inherently invalid. Each can serve a legitimate commercial purpose. Murabaha can facilitate an actual purchase where the financier genuinely acquires and assumes responsibility for the asset before selling it. Ijarah can finance the use of an asset where the lessor retains real ownership obligations. Diminishing musharakah can support home ownership where the parties genuinely share ownership and the customer gradually acquires the financier’s units. The problem arises when these contracts are treated as legal devices for guaranteeing the same return that would have been received under an interest-bearing loan. A workable definition must therefore contain both a formal and a substantive test. The formal test will examine the legal category of the contract. The substantive test will determine whether the financier has provided an asset, service or productive participation and whether it has assumed a genuine risk corresponding to its return. This test should not be misunderstood as hostility towards fixed prices. A lawful sale price may be fixed. Rent may be determined in advance. A service fee may be agreed. The existence of a fixed amount does not by itself establish riba. The decisive question is what the payment represents. A fee charged for maintaining an account, transferring funds, valuing property, arranging documentation or providing an identifiable professional service may be legitimate. A “service fee” calculated as a percentage of a loan, increasing with time and unrelated to the actual cost or nature of the service may be interest under another name. The same care is required in relation to delayed payment. A seller, who supplies goods on deferred payment, may charge a price higher than the immediate cash price, provided one price is finally agreed when the contract is concluded. Once the debt has been created, however, an additional amount cannot ordinarily be imposed merely because the debtor requires more time. This is where many modern systems institutionalise exploitation. A

The preceding parts of this series have gradually separated concepts that modern banking has merged. Money used for payments is not the same thing as investment capital. A current account is not economically identical to funds deliberately committed to enterprise. Commercial-bank money creation is not automatically riba, but neither should monetary privilege remain beyond scrutiny. Once these distinctions are accepted, an obvious question arises: how will productive activity actually be financed? No modern economy can function merely by condemning interest. Farmers require seasonal finance. Manufacturers need machinery and working capital. Exporters must bridge the period between production and receipt of foreign proceeds. Families need housing. Governments require infrastructure. Entrepreneurs need capital before their businesses begin earning revenue. A serious alternative to riba must finance all of these activities (see the model of Robobank). The answer is not to replace every conventional loan with musharakah. Nor is it to rename a predetermined financial return as “profit”. Islamic commercial jurisprudence developed several different contractual forms precisely because economic transactions differ. Sale, lease, partnership, advance purchase and manufacturing contracts perform different functions and allocate ownership and risk differently. The real task is to connect financial return with an identifiable economic basis. A useful starting principle is simple: money should not generate a guaranteed return merely because money has been advanced. Return should arise from trade, ownership, service, productive participation or genuine exposure to commercial risk. This does not mean that every legitimate return must fluctuate. A trader may sell an asset for a fixed profit. A landlord may agree a fixed rent. A contractor may charge a predetermined price. A manufacturer may agree in advance to produce goods for a specified consideration. The prohibition of riba does not abolish prices. What matters is what stands behind the price. State Bank of Pakistan itself explains murabaha as a sale rather than a loan: the seller acquires a commodity, discloses its cost and sells it at an agreed profit. SBP similarly recognises mudarabah, musharakah, ijarah, salam and istisna as distinct Islamic financing structures. Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) maintains separate Shariah standards for murabaha, ijarah, salam, istisna and musharakah precisely because each represents a different legal and commercial relationship. The distinction is fundamental. Consider machinery required by an industrial enterprise. A conventional bank may lend Rs.100 million and require repayment of principal plus interest. Under a genuine murabaha structure, the financier purchases identified machinery, assumes ownership during the relevant period and subsequently sells it to the customer at an agreed deferred price. The return is then legally attached to a sale. This difference has substance only if the financier actually acquires what it claims to sell. Ownership cannot be reduced to a momentary paper entry while every risk, liability and practical responsibility remains with the customer from beginning to end. The same principle applies to ijarah. A financier that purchases machinery, vehicles or other productive assets and leases them to a business may legitimately earn rent because it owns an asset whose use is being transferred. Ownership, however, carries obligations. Structural ownership risks cannot simply be transferred wholesale to the lessee while the financier retains only the right to receive money. The issue is thus not whether rent happens to resemble an interest payment in amount. Economic prices often converge. The decisive issue is whether a genuine lease exists. Housing illustrates the point particularly well. Diminishing musharakah has become one of the major financing techniques used in Islamic banking. Under its proper conception, the financier and customer acquire a property jointly. The customer pays rent for the financier’s share and progressively purchases units of that share until sole ownership is achieved. State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has long maintained specific Shariah standards governing Sharikat-ul-Milk and diminishing musharakah. This can provide a defensible alternative to an interest-bearing mortgage. Its legitimacy, however, depends upon genuine co-ownership. If the customer bears every cost and risk from the first day, if the bank’s capital is effectively guaranteed irrespective of what happens to the asset, and if the entire arrangement merely reproduces principal plus benchmarked return, the partnership becomes increasingly formal rather than substantive. The same scrutiny is required in agriculture. Agriculture is ill-suited to rigid debt repayment because its returns depend upon weather, crop disease, market prices, water availability and timing. A farmer may incur losses despite diligence and competence. Classical commercial law contains an instrument remarkably suited to this problem: salam. Under salam, the purchaser pays the price in advance for specified goods to be delivered later. The farmer obtains working capital before harvest. The purchaser acquires a commercial claim to the future crop and assumes the market risk associated with buying it in advance. This is not charity. It is trade. Properly developed agricultural salam markets could provide farmers with liquidity without forcing them into compounding debt when crops fail. Warehousing, quality certification, crop insurance or takaful, commodity exchanges and transparent market information would be necessary to make such financing scalable. Istisna can similarly serve manufacturing, construction and infrastructure. A textile mill, irrigation facility, industrial machine and housing project need not be forced into one universal debt contract. Partnership financing becomes important where future returns are uncertain. Musharakah permits parties to combine capital and share results. Mudarabah separates capital from enterprise: one party provides funds and another skill and management. Return is connected with actual economic performance. Their difficulty is equally obvious. Profit-and-loss sharing cannot work where accounts are unreliable, sales remain hidden, related-party transactions are opaque and litigation takes years. A financier unable to determine actual profit will naturally prefer a fixed receivable. Financial reform requires credible accounts, meaningful audit, digital documentation, effective insolvency laws, reliable registries and quick commercial adjudication. Risk sharing cannot flourish where information itself cannot be trusted. There is, however, another question we rarely ask: why must productive finance remain concentrated in a few large banks? History offers an instructive example. Rabobank did not begin as the international institution known today. Its origins were local Dutch farmers’

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest”— Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, The Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 1955   On the morning of August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a living city. Children were preparing for school, workers were beginning another day, meals were being eaten, conversations remained unfinished and countless ordinary plans had been made for an evening many would never see. At 8:15 am, a single atomic bomb changed all that. In seconds, a city became an inferno and human ingenuity demonstrated what it was capable of when divorced from human conscience. Three days later, Nagasaki suffered the same fate.   More than eight decades have passed, yet the mind still struggles to comprehend what happened. Not merely the scale of destruction, but the extraordinary contradiction it represented. Human beings had acquired sufficient knowledge of physics to split the atom but apparently insufficient wisdom to prevent that knowledge from being used to incinerate fellow human beings. This raises an uncomfortable question: is man the cruellest animal?   Animals kill. Nature is certainly not a sentimental place. Predators hunt for food, animals fight over territory, mates and dominance, and some species occasionally kill for reasons other than immediate survival. Yet no creature other than Homo sapiens has transformed killing into an organised industry. No animal constructs factories to manufacture weapons capable of destroying entire cities. None develops elaborate ideologies to justify mass slaughter, calculates acceptable casualties or decorates members of its species for becoming exceptionally efficient at killing others. Only the supposedly “wise man” has achieved such sophistication.   The atomic bombings cannot, of course, be examined outside the horrors of the Second World War. Nazi Germany had perpetrated the holocaust. Imperial Japan had committed horrific atrocities across Asia. Cities had already been devastated by conventional and incendiary bombing. Millions of soldiers and civilians were dead. Defenders of the decision to use atomic weapons maintain that the bombs accelerated Japan’s surrender and avoided an invasion that could have caused enormous casualties on both sides. Critics have long questioned whether alternatives existed and whether the second bombing, in particular, was necessary.   Historians may continue debating these questions. Humanity must confront another. At what point does military necessity cease to provide moral shelter for the deliberate infliction of unimaginable suffering upon civilians? Perhaps the most disturbing legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not simply that atomic bombs were used. It is that humanity had reached a stage where the destruction of enormous number of ordinary people could be incorporated into strategic calculation. Human beings had become numbers. Therein lies the first requirement of organised cruelty: dehumanisation.   Before we can inflict unbearable suffering upon others, we must somehow stop seeing them as ourselves. They become the enemy, an alien race, religion, nationality, sect or ideology. Children become unfortunate collateral damage. Dead bodies become casualty figures. Destroyed neighbourhoods become strategic targets. Language performs the anaesthesia that conscience might otherwise refuse. Once human beings are converted into categories, almost anything becomes possible.   History is littered with evidence. Colonial atrocities required subject populations to be regarded as inferior. Ethnic cleansing requires neighbours to become enemies. Genocide requires individual faces to disappear behind collective labels. Modern warfare similarly becomes easier to tolerate when suffering is viewed through satellite images rather than through the eyes of a mother holding her dead child. Perhaps that explains one of the strangest contradictions of our species. The same human hand that tenderly caresses a newborn can press the button that launches a missile towards somebody else’s newborn.   The same species that produces Mozart and Rumi, builds hospitals, writes poetry, explores distant planets and risks lives rescuing strangers from disasters also constructs concentration camps, torture chambers, chemical weapons and nuclear warheads. How can such tenderness and such barbarity inhabit the same creature?   We proudly call ourselves civilised. Yet civilisation cannot merely mean technological advancement. If anything, technology without corresponding moral advancement makes human beings more dangerous, not less. A primitive weapon can kill one person. Human intelligence created weapons capable of killing millions. Science gives us power. It does not necessarily give us wisdom. That distinction should haunt us.   The scientists who unlocked the secrets of the atom demonstrated one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements. But when knowledge becomes separated from ethics, achievement can become catastrophe. Ten years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, together with other distinguished scientists, issued their famous manifesto warning humanity about nuclear war. Their appeal was breathtakingly simple: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”   What an extraordinary plea to have to make to human beings. Remember that the person across the border is human. Remember that the child beneath the rubble is human. Remember that the mother screaming outside a hospital is human. Remember that beneath uniforms, flags, religions, ethnicities and nationalities beats essentially the same vulnerable human heart.   Yet eighty-one years after Hiroshima, humanity still maintains nuclear arsenals capable of inflicting destruction on a scale those who witnessed 1945 could scarcely have imagined. Governments speak comfortably of deterrence, strategic balance, tactical nuclear weapons and acceptable responses. Behind this sophisticated vocabulary lies an elementary reality: we have created instruments capable of annihilating ourselves and entrusted their possible use to human beings subject to anger, ambition, miscalculation and fear. What could be more absurd?   Perhaps the problem lies in our understanding of civilisation itself. We measure progress through economic growth, scientific discovery, technological innovation and military capability. We celebrate artificial intelligence, space exploration and machines capable of performing tasks once thought impossible but are we becoming better human beings? Can technological advancement truly be called progress if our moral consciousness remains primitive?   The jungle may be brutal, but it possesses no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Bosnia, no Rwanda and no Gaza. Animals do not convene conferences to plan genocide. They do not manufacture propaganda to persuade millions to hate strangers. They do not teach generations to inherit ancient hostilities. Above all, they have never developed

By General Ghulam Mustafa & Arshad H Abbasi  We have stood together at the foot of the Great Wall of China more than once at different times, but today a thought has returned to both of us, unspoken until now. The Wall runs some 21,196 kilometres across dynasties and deserts, built stone by stone over centuries to secure a civilization’s frontier. Pakistan’s own most dangerous frontier — the Durand Line separating us from Afghanistan — runs roughly 2,625 kilometres, barely an eighth of that length. If a civilization on the scale of China could raise a barrier of that magnitude with the tools of the third century BC, then securing a border less than an eighth as long, with the tools of the twenty-first century, cannot be beyond the reach of the partnership Beijing and Islamabad have built. We do not ask China to build us a wall of stone. We ask Beijing to help us build something sturdier: a wall of enforced accountability against the militants using Afghan soil to bleed Pakistan dry. That bleeding is not a metaphor. Since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has operated with a freedom of movement across our western border that it never enjoyed before. Balochistan burns. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa buries its soldiers and its schoolchildren in the same week. And now the shockwaves have reached Punjab, the country’s demographic and economic core. Every honest accounting of this violence traces back to the same source: sanctuary, training, and logistical freedom on Afghan soil, tolerated or unchecked by an administration in Kabul that owes its survival, in no small part, to Chinese patience and Chinese capital. This is why we write to Beijing, and to Beijing specifically, rather than to Washington, Brussels, or Moscow. Survey after survey inside Pakistan finds that well over eight in ten of our citizens consider China, not any Western power, to be Pakistan’s true friend. Our leaders have called this friendship higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean, and we do not repeat that line as ceremony. We repeat it because it is the only frame in which Beijing can hear what we are about to say plainly: no other country on earth holds the leverage over the Taliban that China holds, and no other country has more to lose from squandering it. Consider what China has already built in Afghanistan without formal recognition of its government. The Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company signed a twenty-five-year contract to develop the Amu Darya oil basin, committing roughly $150 million annually and scaling toward $540 million over three years. State-backed firms continue to negotiate the long-stalled Mes Aynak copper concession, one of the largest untapped copper deposits on earth, alongside serious interest in Afghan lithium and iron ore. Beijing has cut tariffs on 98 % of Afghan imports. An active Chinese embassy operates in Kabul today, accepting Taliban-appointed diplomats, even as formal recognition is withheld. This is not incidental engagement. This is the deepest economic relationship any major power currently has with the Taliban administration, and it gives China something no airstrike or sanction regime has ever given anyone: the ability to make continued investment conditional on results. We are asking Beijing to use that leverage with the same discipline it has already shown in defending its own security interests. China has made clear, repeatedly and without apology, that it will not tolerate the Turkistan Islamic Party or East Turkistan Islamic Movement fighters operating from Afghan territory against Xinjiang. We are asking only that China extend that identical, non-negotiable standard to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its allied networks operating against us. If Kabul can be made to understand that Chinese mining contracts, Chinese tariff relief, and Chinese diplomatic cover all depend on a genuine, verifiable crackdown on TTP sanctuaries, this insurgency does not need years to end. It needs a Kabul administration that finally has more to lose from harbouring militants than from disowning them. But security pressure alone will not hold, and here we want to be honest about what Afghanistan actually needs from its neighbours, China chief among them. Afghanistan’s national literacy rate stands at just 37 % — 52 % among men, a mere 27 % among women — and UNESCO reports that more than nine in ten ten-year-olds in the country cannot read a simple sentence. Two point two million adolescent girls remain locked out of secondary school entirely, the only country on earth to enforce such a ban, at a projected cost to Afghanistan’s own economy of nearly $9.6 billion in lost potential by 2066. No pipeline, no copper mine, and no railway line will stabilize a country where the next generation cannot read the contracts, safety manuals, or engineering plans that would let them run these projects themselves. It is China’s duty, as the neighbour with the deepest economic stake and the clearest long-term interest in a stable Afghanistan, to make literacy, vocational training, and the reopening of girls’ education a hard condition of its investment — not out of charity, but because an illiterate, disenfranchised population is the same population the TTP and ETIM recruit from. Afghanistan does not need a foreign army. It needs classrooms, teachers, and a workforce equipped to build the country’s own future, backed by an investor patient and disciplined enough to insist on it. Every failed intervention in Afghanistan’s modern history has shared the same flaw: outsiders who came to fight a war, not to build a neighbour. Britain came and left. The Soviet Union came and left, at ruinous cost to itself. NATO and the United States spent two decades and did not leave functioning institutions behind them. China is different in the one respect that matters most: China is not leaving. It shares a border with Afghanistan. Its investments are measured in decades, not electoral cycles. And it has, through the Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, already built the template for what real