The missing half of Independence, a nation’s…

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was one of the most multifaceted poets of the subcontinent. The scope of his poetry covers various areas such as peace, humanity, humility, spirituality, patriotism, patience, struggle, and many other important aspects of human life. The light of his poetry reaches the minds and souls of people belonging to different walks of life. Latif was born in a period when Persian was the official language and was also the language of poetry and other means of expression. However, he broke the chains of tradition, put aside the fear of social conventions, and used Sindhi instead of Persian as the medium of his poetry. His narrative reinforces the idea that one should prefer native and indigenous languages to foreign ones, because one’s identity and cultural association are linked with indigenous languages. He does not mean to disrespect Persian; rather, he intends to reinforce the significance of native languages. Patriotism was one of the important themes of Latif’s poetry. Sur Marvi is a testament to his inner feelings about the homeland and the deep love attached to it. According to the story, when Marvi was allegedly kidnapped by Umar, the ruler of the time, and brought to his grand palace, she rejected the luxuries and comforts of the palace. Instead, she requested Umar to return her to Malir, her homeland. Marvi tells Umar that if she dies in imprisonment, her dead body should be sent back to her beloved parents, ancestors, and the land of Malir. Even after her demise, reaching her homeland would bring comfort and peace to her soul. She wishes to be buried among the fragrant herbs and plants of her beloved land. This symbolises love, simplicity, and attachment to the homeland and its people. It shows that despite achieving all worldly luxuries and privileges, a person with a true conscience desires to return to their native land. For Latif, love for the homeland is more than a feeling or a sense of belonging. It is an attachment to one’s identity, culture, and indigenous roots. Therefore, Marvi does not care about worldly luxuries but desires to return to Malir, which may be simple but possesses natural beauty, pure love, and the affection of relatives and fellow beings. For Marvi, her homeland Malir is superior and matchless. In Sur Sarang, Latif discusses rain and the prosperity that follows rainfall through agriculture, irrigation, and the grazing of domestic animals and livestock. Latif describes Thar as a thirsty land that has always longed for rain and showers because the sustainability of Thar depends upon rainfall. The dark clouds over Thar bring excitement and happiness, not only to the poor people but also to their livestock. For the rain-thirsty region of Thar, rain indicates the hope of prosperity. After rainfall, lands are cultivated, animals are kept in homes, and people experience prosperity. This reflects the deep association between humans and nature and shows how people keep high hopes from natural blessings such as rain. Latif’s poetry does not only confine itself to love, peace, and patriotism; patience, humanity, self-surrender, and contentment with minimum means are also significant themes of his poetry. He emphasises the purity and piousness of the inner soul and encourages people to sacrifice worldly desires to elevate their inner selves. During the British era, many British officers posted in Sindh recognised the greatness of Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry and paid tribute to him. Writers and scholars such as H.T. Sorley considered him one of the great poets of the world. Through their contributions, they tried to promote and spread Latif’s message of love, peace, humanity, brotherhood, and tolerance. They observed that although Latif’s poetry apparently covers regional issues and feelings, its thoughts and expressions are universal and comparable with the works of internationally recognised poets. While talking about the concept of the Lord, Latif explains that apparently there seems to be one palace having hundreds of thousands of doors and countless windows. Wherever one looks, one can see the presence of the Lord. This indicates that God is omnipresent and can be seen through different forms of His creation and symbols. One of the fundamental aspects of Latif’s poetry is real love and the approach towards the Creator. According to Latif, the initial step to achieve this elevated spiritual status is to become humble, submissive, caring, and kind towards people living on earth. He believes that in order to have access to God, one has to brush aside worldly desires and become humble and devoted. His poetry also contains messages of hope, patience, courage, and adventure. Latif says that those who have the courage and determination to cross rivers of difficulties and hardships will ultimately reach their destination. In his poetry, the river symbolises obstacles and difficult situations that a person faces while struggling to achieve success. Those who are brave enough to face the horrifying waves of difficulties can ultimately cross the river and achieve their goals. Latif also emphasises avoiding excessive desires of the material world. According to him, the way to spiritual elevation is to remain humble, kind, and caring towards the creatures of the Lord. His poetry teaches people that life is temporary and that one must play one’s role positively in this world to achieve success in the spiritual world. Sur Samundi is another important chapter of Latif’s poetry. In this Sur, Latif depicts the life of marine traders, their economic struggles, social issues, and the feelings of their loved ones when these sailors travel through deep seas and remain away from their homes for many months. In this chapter of his poetry, Latif observes that people of the olden days were involved in trade and commerce and lived prosperous lives. These mariners travelled to far off areas and traded various valuable items, including diamonds, pearls, and jewels. They left the comforts and luxuries of their homes because they preferred trade and adventure to a comfortable life. Latif not only highlights the success and struggles of these traders but also

Connecting Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) to the National Grid—and guaranteeing a dedicated clean hydro quota—is not merely an infrastructural goal; it is an ecological imperative and the definitive key to realizing the region’s full potential. High in the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, where soaring glaciers feed the roaring Indus River, sits Gilgit-Baltistan—a land defined by its breathtaking landscapes, strategic geopolitical footprint, and an excruciating policy failure. Though this high-mountain region acts as the primary water tower of Pakistan, generating the very lifeblood that sustains the nation’s agricultural heartland and downstream hydroelectric dams, its own citizens spend their lives in perpetual darkness. For nearly eight decades since independence, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan have endured a chronic, soul-crushing energy crisis. In the harsh high-altitude winters, when temperatures plunge far below freezing and regional run-of-the-river hydel plants freeze solid or lose flow, power outages stretch to an agonizing twenty-two hours a day. Entire cities like Skardu and Gilgit grind to an absolute halt. Modern medical facilities run on expensive, precarious diesel generators, students study by the dim flicker of kerosene lamps, and families are forced to strip fragile mountain ecosystems of firewood simply to survive the winter. This domestic isolation becomes outright tragic when set against the backdrop of broader South Asian regional integration. Today, cross-border grid interconnections are becoming standard practice across the subcontinent. India has built high-voltage transmission lines linking its power architecture with Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, while making major technical strides to link Sri Lanka across the Palk Strait. Under frameworks like the “One Sun, One World, One Grid” initiative, neighboring nations seamlessly buy, sell, and route cross-border electricity to balance seasonal surpluses and deficits. Bhutan finances its national development by wheeling clean hydro power directly into the Indian market. Nepal trades its monsoon hydro surpluses across borders to avoid spilling water, pulling power back when river flows decline. Even nations separated by deep political, geographic, and sovereign boundaries manage to run copper and steel across international borders so their citizens do not sit in the dark. Yet, after 79 years of shared history, Pakistan presents an embarrassing anomaly. The state has built a national power grid that spans thousands of miles from the Arabian Sea to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and downcountry Pakistan often wrestles with systemic generation capacity surpluses, yet it has failed to link its own sovereign territory of Gilgit-Baltistan to the National Grid. Gilgit-Baltistan remains an island—an off-grid enclave stranded inside its own country, cut off from the main transmission backbone. While foreign nations in South Asia trade thousands of megawatts in real time across sovereign borders, Pakistan’s own northern frontier cannot draw a single kilowatt from the national thermal and solar reserves down south during the freezing winter months. This policy neglect is even more absurd considering that mere miles from where local populations freeze, one of the greatest engineering feats in South Asian history is taking shape. The Diamer Basha Dam Project, currently under construction near Chilas on the River Indus, boasts an astounding installed generation capacity of 4,500 megawatts and an expected annual output of over eighteen billion units of clean, renewable energy. The dam will transform Pakistan’s national economy, but it raises a fundamental moral and legal question: will it transform the lives of the people living in its shadow, or will the power simply pass over their heads to serve distant urban centers while local towns remain dark? To correct a structural imbalance that has persisted since 1947, the Federal Government of Pakistan and the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) must formally dedicate a guaranteed quota of 500 megawatts of power from the Diamer Basha Dam directly to Gilgit-Baltistan. This allocation is not an act of federal charity; it is a pragmatic, economically transformative, and ethically mandatory policy that aligns local resource rights with national progress. To understand why a 500-megawatt direct allocation is essential, one must look at the region’s fragile, isolated micro-hydel infrastructure. Historically, Gilgit-Baltistan has relied on small-scale localized plants built on seasonal mountain streams. While these plants function adequately during the summer melt, they are acutely vulnerable to climate shifts and freeze cycles. When winter arrives and glacial run-offs plummet, local power generation drops by over eighty percent. Because the region is not connected to the main transmission grid, it cannot import balancing power, leaving the local economy frozen. Despite possessing immense potential as an international hub for eco-tourism, organic agriculture, high-altitude software hubs, and gemstone processing, serious industrial investors routinely stay away due to acute energy insecurity. The cost of doing business is artificially inflated by reliance on imported fossil fuels, creating a cycle of underdevelopment that forces educated, talented youth to migrate to major cities downcountry in search of basic livelihoods. Allocating 500 megawatts out of Diamer Basha’s 4,500-megawatt capacity represents just eleven percent of the dam’s total output. For the national power sector, absorbing this slight allocation is negligible. For Gilgit-Baltistan, however, this capacity is transformative. It represents complete regional energy self-sufficiency, year-round grid stability, and surplus capacity to fuel industrial growth for generations. To execute this vision cleanly and equitably, a structured cost-sharing implementation model must be established between the federal center and the region. The federal government and WAPDA must formally ring-fence a 500-megawatt generation quota from the powerhouse specifically for the region at concessional local tariffs. In return, the regional government of Gilgit-Baltistan must take complete ownership of downstream execution. The regional government must build high-voltage transmission lines connecting the powerhouse at Chilas to major regional load centers like Gilgit, Skardu, Hunza, and Ghizer, while overhauling local grid stations and distribution lines. By dividing responsibility—federal generation matched by regional distribution—both parties build a long-overdue partnership rooted in shared accountability. An allocation of this scale does far more than illuminate living rooms; it fundamentally reshapes the socio-economic trajectory of the entire northern frontier. With a dependable baseload, Gilgit-Baltistan can transition from a subsistence economy to a value-added manufacturing and processing hub. Local mineral wealth—including high-grade marble, granite, and precious gemstones—can be processed

Feelings operate like an inner radar system that signals what type of frequency our mind is currently broadcasting. A story beautifully highlights this reality: A young student once felt highly anxious before a critical meeting with his spiritual guide. He arrived tense, clutching his notebook and worrying about his performance. When he finally sat before the mentor, his breathing was heavy. The mentor smiled warmly, placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, and offered him a simple cup of water. In that single instant, all the accumulated tension drained away from the student. He felt completely safe and filled with high-frequency positive energy. Driving back from the meeting, even when someone cut him off on the road or honked aggressively, he remained utterly untroubled. Even if his corporate boss started shouting the moment he walked into the office, his inner peace remained unshaken because he was overflowing with positive energy. Now consider the absolute opposite scenario. You wake up with a jolt to a loud crashing sound outside. Moments later, you hear your spouse shouting from the adjacent room—it is the third time she is attempting to wake up the kids, and they are completely ignoring her. She is furious, venting her frustration on them and calling out to you as well. When you step out, she glares at you and demands that you go fetch breakfast because the kitchen gas supply is down. Rubbing your eyes, you head to the crowded marketplace, wait in a frustratingly long queue, and finally bring food home, only to see her brow still furrowed with deep tension. You hurriedly change and leave for work. In this deeply negative emotional state, even the most beautiful scenery on your commute cannot move you, and the warm smiles or pleasant mood of your office colleagues will fail to lift your spirits because your primary emotional anchor is entirely negative. When your thoughts are positive, the whole world looks beautiful; when your thoughts are negative, everything tastes bitter. Statistics reveal that a human mind processes nearly 70,000 thoughts per day, while core human feelings can be classified into two fundamental pillars: positive and negative. These two emotional streams branch out into roughly 30 to 60 distinct emotional expressions. Consider what is easier to manage: tracking 70,000 chaotic daily thoughts or monitoring 60 distinct feelings? The answer is obvious. By focusing your energy on regulating your feelings, your thoughts naturally align themselves, preventing you from getting lost in a labyrinth of mental anxiety. A vital question often arises: Can an individual actively stop or cancel out a deeply ingrained, negative thought sequence? The ultimate answer is no. If you forcefully try to fight, delete, or suppress a negative thought patterns, you end up giving it more power, and it anchors itself deeper in your subconscious. Imagine a spiritual guide telling you, ‘Close your eyes and meditate for five minutes, but whatever you do, absolutely do not think about a black monkey.’ Within seconds, your mind will be entirely flooded with images of a black monkey. This is because the subconscious mind cannot process a negative command in isolation; it focuses heavily on the core imagery provided. Instead of trying to aggressively cancel out negative thoughts, the correct strategy is replacement. The moment a negative sequence takes root, shift your attention entirely to an opposing positive thought or an active feeling of deep gratitude. Our mind cannot actively host two completely contrasting emotional states simultaneously. By choosing to step out of the mental labyrinth and leaning into positive memory, appreciation, or prayer, you naturally starve the negative loops of energy. Developing deep concentration and continuous awareness is the master key to mastering this mental landscape. While it sounds simple, maintaining absolute focus on your inner state requires active practice, especially when daily life pulls your attention in a hundred different directions. Engaging in regular, meditative prayer or mindful contemplation helps quiet the chatter of the ego and firmly anchors your spirit in a high-frequency state of gratitude. True inner mastery begins the moment you consciously choose which feelings you allow to run your day.

(When the water rises, who shows up and who is left waiting?) ‎I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. When the water rises in Muskingum County or the Punjab plains, who shows up, and who is left waiting? I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. ‎ ‎My mother and brother still live right near South Zanesville, just a stone’s throw from Crooksville. When heavy rains hit Perry and Muskingum counties, I don’t need to be there to know what it looks like. I can picture the heavy, chocolate-brown water backing up into the low spots, the damp chill that settles into a basement, the fears of what if the waters reach a house trailer, and that specific, exhausting smell of river mud that takes weeks to scrub out of porch boards and carpet. The worries of if the home has structural damage.. Halfway across the world in Pakistan, the landscape couldn’t look more different. But when monsoon season swells the rivers across the Punjab, the view from the ground is hauntingly identical. ‎ ‎Standing in a flooded doorway feels the same whether you are in Ohio or Lahore. The quiet shock is the same. The ruin of things you worked years to buy is the same. And the very first instinct is to grab your coat, shovel, a chainsaw and a pair of boots and go check on the elderly woman next door.. Start hauling wet furniture, debris to the curb and giving comfort, food and basics to those in need is entirely universal. Watching both worlds at once makes you look at governance differently. It strips away abstract political jargon and leaves you asking one fundamental question: When a community is hit with a crisis, does its system build capable people who can act, or does it leave them sitting on their hands, waiting for permission to survive? ‎ ‎What a Small Ohio Village Taught Me About Governance ‎ ‎Growing up around South Zanesville and Crooksville, you learn pretty early that small-town life relies on a very specific kind of quiet, distributed agency. ‎Crooksville isn’t a rich town. It’s a hard-working Appalachian village of under 1,500 people. But when the creek overflows, nobody sits around waiting for a press conference out of Washington, D.C., or a mandate from the state capital in Columbus. ‎ ‎The response moves in waves because the connections are already wired: ‎On the local levels we see neighbor checks on neighbor. The volunteer fire department turns on the sirens, pulls out the high-water gear, and starts the door to door knocks. At the County level we have the Perry County 911 dispatch and Emergency Management Agency (EMA) start tracking water levels and routing equipment where it’s needed most. At the State level, If the county gets overwhelmed, pre set legal triggers immediately call in the Ohio EMA or the National Guard. ‎ ‎Government here doesn’t replace the community’s instinct to help itself; it validates it, organizes it, and backs it up with real resources. The system trusts the people on the ground to know their own roads. Here in Pakistan, the human spirit is just as generous, if not more so. The impulse toward hospitality, neighborly charity, and mutual support runs incredibly deep. When disaster strikes, ordinary citizens open their wallets and their homes without a second thought. It’s just what they do… ‎ ‎And Pakistan’s has one of the world’s top class military engineering, a massive national disaster agency (the NDMA), and incredible private charities. The raw capacity is immense. Yet, too often, there is a however a very heartbreaking disconnect between that high-level power and the family standing in ankle deep water in a local neighborhood. An ordinary citizen here once described the country to me using a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: a child that was never allowed to stand on its own feet. An infant isn’t helpless because it lacks potential. It’s helpless because it hasn’t been given the space to build muscle, fall over, adjust its balance, and try again. If an authority figure picks the child up every single time it tries to pull itself up, the child never learns to walk—not from a lack of ability, but because the environment denied it the chance to build strength. ‎ ‎That is how systemic learned dependency takes root: Central authorities assume total control, bypassing local municipal councils. Neighborhoods are given no real budget or authority to fix their own drainage or organize local response teams. And when a flood comes, citizens have no choice but to wait for distant, top-down relief. The authorities look at the waiting crowd and say, “See? The people can’t manage without us.” ‎We witness power centralized even further, deepening the exact helplessness it claims to fix. Over generations, people adapt to the system they are given. If a system rewards waiting for a political patron, people learn to wait for patrons. If it rewards local initiative, communities build habits of self-reliance. It is very easy to blame culture or public apathy for civic passivity, but that misses the point entirely. Culture simply reflects the structural incentives people are given to survive and adapt. It is nature vs nurture and we have a break down when these two things fail to promote a cohesiveness and inclusion of what is a community and what that actually means. ‎ ‎Across the globe, the relationship between state control and citizen participation varies wildly, proving that central authority does not have to mean public powerlessness. In China, a deeply centralized state framework actively structures and expects local neighborhood committees and civil volunteer groups to manage community-level crises. Across much of Europe, comprehensive state safety nets exist alongside highly empowered municipal councils and professionalized local volunteer forces.

Decolonization is often thought of as the process through which colonized nations became free from foreign rule. Flags changed, colonial governments were removed and national governments were. Political independence was officially given back. Yet political freedom did not always mean intellectual, cultural, linguistic or psychological freedom. In places that were once colonized the structures of colonialism stayed long after the colonizers left. These structures continued through education systems, languages, cultural expectations, literary standards, social organizations, economic systems, media portrayals and inherited ideas about what’s considered knowledge, civilization, intelligence, progress and even beauty. This ongoing influence brings up a question: Can a country really be independent if its people still judge themselves using the intellectual standards of their former rulers? The point of this article is that political decolonization is not complete without the decolonization of the mind. Decolonizing minds does not mean rejecting everything from the West. Does it mean replacing one way of thinking with another? Instead it means looking at the systems of knowledge that have been passed down, finding voices that have been ignored, acknowledging indigenous ways of thinking, challenging language and culture hierarchies and building confidence to create knowledge based on one’s own history and society while still being open to global ideas. The idea of the “colonization of the mind” is very important because colonialism was not about politics or money. Colonial powers often tried to show that their language, literature, religion, schools, social systems and ways of knowing were better than those of the people they ruled. The people who were colonized were. Sometimes forced to believe that the culture of the colonizers was modern while their own traditions were backward. The result was a system where the colonized person started to see themselves through the eyes of the people who ruled them. Frantz Fanon in his books about the psychology of colonialism showed how colonial control gets into the minds of the people who are oppressed. So colonialism does not end because the person in charge leaves. Its biggest success happens when its ideas and beliefs become part of the colonized person’s thinking. The mental impact of colonialism is one of its lasting effects. A colonized mind may feel ashamed of its language, accent, literature, clothing, history, traditions and ways of thinking. It may think that foreign things are advanced and local things are outdated. A student may think that an English source is automatically more important than a source from their country that is just as good. A university may value ideas from Europe or North America while not giving attention to ideas from Africa, Asia, Latin America or native communities. A society may celebrate culture while thinking its own traditions are old-fashioned. These views are not always because of individuals; they are often the result of historical systems that have taught generations what to admire and what to ignore. Education is one of the important places where decolonization needs to happen. Colonial education systems were often built not to help the people they ruled but to serve the needs of the rulers. Even though schools today have changed a lot, many still repeat the ways of knowing. The lessons may focus on history, Western books, European philosophy and Western science while giving little space to local knowledge and traditions. This does not mean that Shakespeare, Aristotle, Kant, Newton or other great thinkers should be removed from the lessons. That would only replace one kind of exclusion with another. The real goal is to have balance. Students should read Shakespeare along with writers from South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and other areas. They should study philosophy while also learning about philosophies from Asia, Africa, the Islamic world and native communities. The purpose is not to get rid of knowledge but to make the learning more wide. A decolonized class asks tough questions about who has been allowed to create knowledge. Who writes history? Who is considered important in literature? Whose language is seen as academic? Whose knowledge is seen as scientific? Whose view defines life? These questions show the politics of knowledge. Knowledge is never made in a vacuum. Schools, universities, publishers, governments, colonial systems and international groups have often decided which types of knowledge are accepted. Decolonization means we have to see these systems and think about them carefully or just accept them as better. Language is possibly the obvious place where intellectual decolonization needs to happen. Colonial languages like English, French, Spanish and Portuguese still hold positions in many countries that used to be colonized. English in particular has become a language and gives access to international learning, technology, jobs, diplomacy and higher education. So the argument for decolonization can’t just be to stop using English. That would be unrealistic. Might even hurt students who need to speak English to communicate internationally. A better argument is to have languages. English should be seen as one tool, not a measure of smartness, civilization or social value. In countries where many languages are spoken, local languages carry histories, memories, identities, oral stories, cultural knowledge and different ways of looking at the world. When a language is pushed aside an entire system of thinking can be weakened. Losing a language is not just losing words; it can also lose knowledge about nature, stories, cultural memory, native words and community identity. Decolonizing the mind means people need to see that speaking a language does not make someone less educated and speaking English does not automatically make someone more intelligent. Knowing a language and being smart are things. A person can be very educated and still express themselves best in a language. At the time, decolonization should not make people dislike English or other global languages. English has been taken by writers, scholars, activists and thinkers from countries and used to show their own experiences. Writers like Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka and many others have shown ways to use colonial languages. Their work shows that language can

One question stayed with me long after I attended a workshop under the project titled ‘Digital Trust and Free Expression in the Era of AI’, organized by the Department of Media and Development Communication, University of the Punjab with the support of the U.S. Mission to Pakistan in partnership with the Pakistan-U.S. Alumni Network, was, ‘How will we preserve digital trust and free expression in the age of AI’? As AI becomes an integral part of digital journalism, the question is no longer whether it should be used, and more importantly who should be held responsible when things go wrong. Artificial Intelligence has definitely proven to be a powerful tool for journalists. It can summarize long reports, translate content into multiple languages, follow breaking news, analyze vast quantities of data and even write complete news reports in seconds. All of these capabilities have revolutionized newsroom processes and enabled journalists to process information more efficiently than ever before. But efficiency is not the only measure of ethical journalism. Journalism isn’t about being fast, it’s about informing the public accurately, fairly and responsibly. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from the workshop was that AI does not understand information; it predicts the most likely response based on patterns in the data it has learned from. This distinction is important because when reliable information is unavailable at the time, AI generates responses that seem convincing but inaccurate, but are wrong, which is often referred to as AI hallucination. What’s most concerning is that the AI generated mistakes can appear convincing enough for people to accept them as true. This poses an ethical question: Who should be held responsible if AI-generated news contains misleading information? The burden can’t be placed entirely on the algorithm. AI has no moral judgement or legal accountability. It cannot distinguish between public interest and public harm and is not aware of the social consequences of publishing inaccurate information. This means that the responsibility rests with those who decide to employ these technologies: journalists, editors, newsroom leaders, and media organizations. While AI can help create content, it cannot replace responsibility. This is where ethics become more important than technological advancements. Checking information should not take a back seat to the ‘Publish first’ mentality. With all of the digital platforms that exist today, misinformation can spread from continent to continent within minutes and corrections often fail to reach the same audience. Each unverified headline altered photo or AI-generated mistake can damage the public’s trust, both in a specific news organization and in journalism.   The discussions also reinforced the importance of Media and Information Literacy (MIL). Verification is not only the responsibility of journalists, but also something that is necessary for every digital citizen. Learning how to use reverse image search, source verification techniques, and critical evaluation of online information is no longer an option, it’s essential for protecting ourselves from deception. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated, it is essential to verify information before accepting it as true. AI will continue to evolve and so will digital journalism. The challenge is not innovation itself but using it responsibly. Trust is not something algorithms can build, it is something that can be gained only through transparency, accountability and a steadfast dedication to truth. While adopting new technologies to do journalism, let’s not forget that the tools should enhance journalism’s values, not shape journalism. AI may help write the news, but only humans can uphold the ethics behind it. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Mission to Pakistan or USEFP.