Concrete Jungle in the Hills: Is Unchecked High-Ri…

Dr. Abdul Jabbar Sahito Karachi, Pakistan The debate over creating new provinces in Pakistan has existed for decades, yet one crucial question remains unanswered: how can the public be convinced that administrative provinces are intended to improve governance rather than increase the burden on the country? Today, public trust in the state is already fragile. People are frustrated by corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and excessive government expenditure. Whenever the idea of creating new provinces is raised, many immediately assume that it will only produce more chief ministers, more governors, more provincial assemblies, more secretaries, chief secretaries, inspectors general (IGs), deputy inspectors general (DIGs), assistant commissioners, deputy commissioners, and an even larger bureaucracy. The public perception is straightforward: if corruption and inefficiency already exist with four provinces, what will happen if Pakistan has thirty-two or even thirty-six provinces? This concern must be addressed before any constitutional or administrative reform is proposed. The government should first present a clear governance model explaining exactly how these new provinces would function. People deserve to know whether these provinces will have provincial assemblies or whether they will operate through a compact administrative structure. Will each province be headed by a governor directly elected by the people? Will representation be limited according to population? These questions must be answered before asking the public for support. The objective of creating administrative provinces should never be to expand the bureaucracy. On the contrary, the government should explain that the existing administrative system can simply be reorganized. Unnecessary bureaucratic positions can be reduced, provincial cabinets can remain small, and major ministries can continue to operate under the federal government to avoid duplication. There should be only one chief executive for each province—either a governor or a chief minister, not both. Representation should remain limited and population-based instead of creating large provincial assemblies. The government must reassure the public that administrative reform will not increase financial burdens. Existing administrative and police structures can be reorganized instead of creating entirely new departments. A lean administrative structure is far more likely to gain public confidence than one that appears expensive and oversized. The purpose of administrative provinces is to bring governance closer to the people. Smaller administrative units can improve healthcare through new hospitals, strengthen education by establishing more schools and universities, expand road networks, and accelerate local infrastructure development. They can also encourage the emergence of new leadership, empower citizens to demand their rights, and make governments more responsive because they will be closer and more accountable to the people. Greater accountability should also become a central feature of this model. Institutions responsible for oversight, including NAB and other accountability bodies, would be able to monitor governance more effectively within smaller administrative units. Better administration can also attract greater investment, encourage industries and factories to expand, bring more businesses and brands into different regions, and create employment opportunities for local communities. The government should particularly engage the younger generation and begin this conversation in Sindh. It must make it absolutely clear that this proposal is not about creating provinces on ethnic or linguistic lines. It is not about separating Muhajirs from Sindhis or dividing communities. The proposal is purely administrative and aims to improve governance for every citizen. Instead of creating a province only for Karachi, every administrative division could become a province. Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Larkana, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Bahawalpur, and other divisions can each function as separate administrative provinces. If necessary, even the names of these provinces can be changed to prevent unnecessary political controversy. The purpose is not division—it is better administration. Such administrative provinces would encourage the establishment of more schools, universities, hospitals, IT parks, industries, factories, and businesses. They would provide young people with better educational opportunities, create employment, stimulate local economies, improve tax collection, strengthen infrastructure, support clean drinking water projects, facilitate the construction of dams, and promote environmental development through better local planning. However, none of these reforms can succeed unless the public fully understands the proposed governance structure. The government must organize seminars in universities, engage students and young professionals, and use the media to educate citizens about the objectives and practical benefits of administrative provinces. Public awareness must come before implementation. Ultimately, people will support administrative provinces only when they are convinced that the reforms are designed to create a government that is smaller, more efficient, more accountable, and closer to the people—not a larger bureaucracy with greater costs. Winning public trust is therefore the first and most essential step toward any successful administrative reform.  

“Nato is a giant military alliance where there are 32 countries. We have started here as three countries and we have to take very humble but concrete steps”—Makkah defence pact technically same as Nato’s Article 5: Turkish minister, The News, August 9, 2026 The above words of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan deserve careful attention. Speaking after the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement between Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he went considerably further than the diplomatic language normally accompanying defence cooperation. He described the arrangement as technically the same as NATO’s Article 5 principle of collective defence. More importantly, Fidan disclosed something about its intended institutional evolution. A ministerial committee resembling NATO’s structure is to be created, a permanent secretariat will be established in Saudi Arabia, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not envisage an organisation permanently confined to its three founding members. Egypt is already being mentioned as a possible entrant. The question we raised immediately after Makkah has therefore acquired greater urgency: are we witnessing the embryonic formation of an Islamic NATO? The answer requires more caution than either celebration or alarm. The Makkah agreement is unquestionably important. Saudi Arabia combines enormous financial and energy resources with a pivotal position in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Türkiye possesses NATO’s second-largest military, an increasingly sophisticated defence-industrial base and strategic access linking Europe, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state located at the intersection of South Asia, China, Central Asia, Iran and the Arabian Sea. Taken together, the three constitute an unusual coalition of middle powers. Their convergence is also occurring at a moment when the regional order constructed around American predominance is under extraordinary strain. The latest Middle Eastern war has again demonstrated that overwhelming military capability can destroy infrastructure and degrade adversaries without necessarily producing political order. Michael Fuchs recently argued in Foreign Affairs that the United States should finally relinquish its attempt to dominate the Middle East militarily. The proposition is important, but it raises a larger question. If American primacy recedes, what replaces it? International relations offers no reason to assume that withdrawal by a dominant external power automatically produces regional peace. It can produce strategic autonomy. It can equally produce competitive balancing, arms races and struggles among regional powers seeking to fill the resulting space. Makkah Defence Agreement represents both an opportunity and a danger. The opportunity is the emergence of indigenous collective security. For much of the modern history of the Middle East, regional states have depended upon external powers for protection while simultaneously fearing abandonment by those same protectors. Britain once performed this role in the Gulf. The United States subsequently constructed a much larger military architecture based upon bases, arms supplies, bilateral guarantees and partnerships. Dependence created security, but never complete strategic autonomy. Saudi Arabia’s search for alternatives must be understood against this background. Türkiye has followed another path: remaining inside NATO while steadily expanding its capacity for independent action. Pakistan maintains a strategic partnership with China without severing its relationships with Washington, Riyadh or Ankara. These are not states simply changing camps. They are practising what contemporary scholarship increasingly describes as hybrid or non-exclusive alignment: cultivating overlapping relationships rather than accepting the rigid binaries of Cold War alliance politics. This makes Fidan’s second assertion as important as his comparison with Article 5. He insists that Makkah is not directed against Iran or any other country. That principle must survive implementation. An alliance requires deterrence; it does not necessarily require a permanent enemy. If the emerging arrangement becomes an anti-Iran coalition, it will institutionalise one of the Muslim world’s most dangerous fault lines. Iran is not a temporary presence in the Gulf. It is a major civilisation and regional power whose geography cannot be altered by sanctions, regime change strategies or military pressure. Pakistan has particular reason to understand this. Iran is its neighbour. Internal sectarian peace, Balochistan, border security, Afghanistan and regional connectivity all make a permanently hostile Pakistan-Iran relationship strategically irrational. Nor should Makkah become simply the Muslim military response to Israel. The Palestinian question cannot be removed from regional security, as proponents of the Abraham Accords sometimes appeared to assume. Normalisation and economic integration cannot indefinitely substitute for a political settlement guaranteeing Palestinian rights and viable statehood. At the same time, transforming the region into two permanent military camps would hardly produce the peace Palestinians themselves require. The better possibility is, thus, not an Islamic NATO in the literal sense. NATO emerged from the particular conditions of post-war Europe and bipolar confrontation with the Soviet Union. The Muslim world is geographically dispersed, politically heterogeneous and internally divided. Its states have very different relations with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Tel Aviv. Türkiye itself demonstrates the difficulty of imposing a binary model: it would simultaneously belong to NATO and to the emerging Makkah Accord. That apparent contradiction may actually tell us something important about the international order now taking shape. The twenty-first century may be characterised less by fixed blocs than by overlapping arrangements through which middle powers seek room for manoeuvre between larger powers. This is also where geoeconomics becomes indispensable. Saudi finance and energy, Türkiye’s manufacturing and defence technology and Pakistan’s geography, human resources and access towards China, Central Asia and the Arabian Sea could create something considerably more important than another military organisation. Egypt’s eventual participation would add the Suez Canal, the Arab world’s largest population and another major military power. A security structure built around such capabilities could eventually support trade, energy corridors, defence production, technological cooperation, food security and infrastructure connectivity. Without this economic foundation, an Islamic NATO would remain largely an exercise in military coordination. China will watch these developments closely. Beijing requires Gulf energy, values Iran, has deep interests in Pakistan and maintains substantial economic relations across the Middle East. It is unlikely to wish to inherit America’s expensive role as regional military hegemon. A regional arrangement capable of providing stability without forcing states into an

​Where the nine-hundred-year legacy of the University of Cambridge has long claimed to stand guard over truth, intellect, and reason, a profoundly agonizing incident has laid bare the deep intellectual, political, and social fault lines of the modern West. Professor Jason Arday—who made history as the youngest Black academic appointed to a professorship at Cambridge—was found dead at his home in South West London on August 14, 2026. To dismiss his sudden passing as a mere bodily collapse or a quiet, solitary cardiac arrest would be a profound act of self-deception. This tragedy is, in truth, the direct consequence of a systemic crisis eroding Western academia—a space where the fragile boundary separating legitimate academic rigor from ruthless political and racial factionalism has dissolved, and where institutional accountability has steadily devolved into a spectacle of public humiliation. ​Jason Arday’s ascent was a rare testament to human endurance and unyielding resolve. Raised in a low-income neighborhood in South London, he was diagnosed in early childhood with a severe form of autism. He remained non-verbal until the age of eleven and was unable to read or write until he was eighteen. Yet, defying both societal expectations and medical prognoses, he mastered the written and spoken word, pursued higher education, and navigated his way through the faculties of Roehampton, Durham, and Liverpool, ultimately securing a chair in sociology at Cambridge in March 2023. ​However, Arday’s arrival at the pinnacle of British academia coincided with an intense ideological war engulfing universities and the press. Over the preceding decade, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives had been elevated to core institutional imperatives across British higher education. Universities leaned into these metrics to rebrand themselves, and scholars of Arday’s caliber frequently became the public face of this transformation. ​This is precisely where the deeper ideological friction of contemporary British society erupted into what is widely characterized as a culture war. On one side stood a progressive consensus viewing DEI policies as a overdue corrective to historical inequities; on the other stood a relentless right-wing press and traditionalist academic factions that framed such appointments as a dilution of meritocracy and an embrace of ideological tokenism. ​When questions were subsequently raised regarding technical details within Arday’s PhD thesis and past curriculum vitae, the matter did not remain confined to quiet internal review. Right-leaning media outlets swiftly weaponized these allegations to mount a broader assault on Cambridge’s DEI framework. The tragedy of this partisan crossfire was that Arday’s humanity was entirely erased; he was reduced from a living, breathing scholar into a battlefield for competing political narratives. ​Academic integrity is undeniably the bedrock of any serious higher education system. When allegations of plagiarism are leveled against a scholar, a university is legally and ethically bound to conduct a thorough, impartial, and confidential inquiry. Yet, when such proceedings leak beyond institutional walls into the arena of tabloid journalism and political point-scoring, the genuine purpose of oversight is lost. ​Liverpool John Moores University had previously conducted a comprehensive investigation into the allegations against Arday, fully exonerating him and reaffirming the validity of his doctorate. However, the toxicity of commercialized media and political polarization ran too deep for that clearance to settle the matter. When Cambridge University, bowing to intense media pressure, announced a secondary independent review, it revealed just how vulnerable modern elite institutions have become to the demands of public relations. ​The most damning dimension of this ordeal was the existential and psychological toll exacted upon a scholar watching a lifetime of discipline destabilized in an instant. In his resignation statement on August 5, Arday explicitly clarified that stepping down was not an admission of guilt, but the final recourse of a human being pushed beyond the limits of endurance by a relentless media trial. Just nine days later, on August 14, 2026, he was dead. Neuroscience and clinical psychology have long documented how sustained public humiliation, character assassination, and the erasure of one’s professional identity can inflict severe somatic stress, culminating in fatal systemic collapse. ​This event casts a severe shadow over liberal democracies that pride themselves on individual dignity and the presumption of innocence. In a hyper-digitized media ecosystem, accusations function as instant convictions in the court of public opinion, long before an individual has a meaningful opportunity to offer a defense. Academia, which ought to serve as a sanctuary for measured deliberation, has proven just as susceptible to sensationalism as the rest of society. Arday’s death leaves scholars worldwide asking whether the academic vocation has shifted from the quiet pursuit of truth to a harrowing exercise in surviving public vilification. ​Jason Arday’s death compels an overdue reckoning: institutional accountability must be structured so that it neither shields genuine intellectual dishonesty nor surrenders an individual scholar to the crossfire of racial and culture wars. If elite universities fail to insulate their investigative processes from media trials and political agendas, the most sensitive and brilliant minds will inevitably retreat from the academic life altogether. Arday’s silence now stands as a profound question mark hanging over the international scholarly community. ​The ultimate lesson of this tragedy is that the dignity of those who dedicate their lives to learning cannot be sacrificed on the altar of political or journalistic expediency. If the institutions entrusted with seeking truth cannot protect their own, society loses its moral compass. Standing before the red-brick facade of Cambridge, one is left asking how a scholar of such promise could crumble on its doorstep. This was not merely the loss of a single life; it was an institutional failure that demands the grief and critical reflection of the global intellectual community. ​The extraordinary resilience with which Arday conquered his early disabilities demonstrated the scale of his ambition and character. Yet, faced with the cold machinery of institutional cowardice and media hostility, that strength was ultimately overwhelmed. This moment offers a final, urgent opportunity for self-examination within higher education. If we remain silent, the fires of ideological intolerance will continue to consume the very minds meant to illuminate

Educational debates in Pakistan usually begin with schools and end with universities. Somewhere in between lies a vast public college network that has quietly undergone a transformation without receiving the reforms necessary to sustain it. For decades, colleges were viewed merely as institutions imparting Intermediate education. That perception is now obsolete. Government colleges across Pakistan award four-year BS degrees, supervise undergraduate research, implement semester systems, and produce graduates completing sixteen years of education. They have become institutions of higher education in every meaningful sense except in the standards by which they recruit, promote and evaluate their faculty. The real crisis begins not when institutions disappear but when they continue to exist while quietly abandoning the purpose they were meant to serve. Pakistan’s college education system increasingly reflects this uncomfortable reality. Buildings stand, classrooms remain occupied, salaries are paid and degrees continue to be awarded, yet the intellectual purpose that ought to define higher education is steadily weakening. The system continues to function, but it no longer asks whether it is producing scholars, researchers and critical thinkers or merely issuing degrees. This contradiction is not merely administrative. It is national. Countries do not build knowledge economies simply by increasing enrolment or opening new campuses. They do so by ensuring that those entrusted with educating the next generation possess the intellectual depth, scholarly discipline and professional integrity demanded by higher education. Pakistan has expanded the responsibilities of its colleges without fundamentally reforming the standards governing those who teach in them. It is this mismatch between expanding responsibilities and stagnant reforms that explains much of the present crisis. History offers repeated warnings against confusing continuity with progress. Great civilisations have seldom been defeated by ignorance alone; far more often, they have been weakened by their refusal to reform. Ancient Troy believed its mighty walls guaranteed safety until destruction entered concealed within the famous wooden horse. Institutions, too, often collapse not because external forces overwhelm them but because internal weaknesses become too familiar to recognise. Pakistan’s colleges face a similar danger. The greatest threat is not inadequate infrastructure or declining enrolment. It is the quiet normalisation of standards that no longer correspond with the responsibilities these institutions now carry. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in faculty recruitment. Every education system is ultimately only as strong as the people it appoints to teach. Laboratories, libraries and curricula matter, but they cannot compensate for weak academic recruitment. A nation’s classrooms reflect the intellectual standards it establishes at the point of entry into the profession. Countries that consistently perform well in higher education understand this principle with remarkable clarity. Finland recruits teachers from among its highest-performing graduates and treats teaching as one of the country’s most competitive professions. Singapore invests heavily in teacher selection, structured professional development and continuous evaluation throughout an educator’s career. South Korea subjects aspiring academics to rigorous competition, while Germany closely links academic progression with scholarly achievement and research productivity. These countries differ in culture, politics and economic history, yet they share one conviction that higher education depends first and foremost upon the quality of its faculty. Pakistan, regrettably, often operates on a different assumption. Recruitment is frequently treated as the culmination of academic achievement rather than its beginning. A lecturer appointed with only a sixteen years education may spend an entire career within the same system without acquiring higher qualifications or contributing substantially to research, yet still retire after holding senior academic positions carrying the titles of Associate Professor or Professor. Such a framework might have appeared understandable when colleges were primarily institutions for Intermediate education. It becomes increasingly indefensible once those same institutions award undergraduate degrees equivalent to those offered by universities. Academic titles should signify scholarly accomplishment rather than the mere passage of time. Across the world, the designation of Professor represents sustained intellectual contribution, recognised research, advanced qualifications and academic leadership. When promotion depends overwhelmingly upon seniority rather than scholarship, titles gradually lose their meaning. The loss is not symbolic alone. It diminishes public confidence in higher education itself. This is not an argument against experience. Experience remains indispensable in teaching. A seasoned educator often possesses insights that no newly qualified academic can immediately acquire. Classrooms are enriched by years of interaction with students, evolving pedagogical techniques and practical wisdom accumulated over decades. Experience, however, should complement scholarship, not replace it. Knowledge no longer remains static for an entire career. Disciplines evolve at astonishing speed. Artificial Intelligence is reshaping linguistics, medicine, engineering, law and the humanities alike. Climate science has transformed environmental studies. Digital humanities have altered literary scholarship. Advances in neuroscience continue redefining educational psychology. A qualification earned thirty years ago, valuable though it remains, cannot alone certify mastery over fields that have changed beyond recognition. Medicine provides an obvious comparison. No patient would willingly place complete trust in a surgeon who had never updated professional knowledge after graduation. Engineers continually adapt to changing technologies and safety standards. Judges engage with evolving constitutional interpretation. Military officers undergo regular professional education throughout their service. Every serious profession recognises that learning is continuous. Higher education cannot become the sole profession where intellectual growth effectively ends with appointment. The irony is that Pakistan’s college sector contains thousands of exceptionally capable teachers who have voluntarily pursued MPhil and PhD degrees despite limited institutional incentives. Many complete advanced research while balancing heavy teaching schedules, administrative responsibilities and family obligations. Their commitment deserves recognition because it reflects a genuine desire to improve professionally rather than merely fulfil formal requirements. Yet the existing structure frequently sends the opposite message. Promotion often rewards waiting more consistently than learning. When advanced qualifications receive insufficient institutional value, the incentive to pursue rigorous scholarship inevitably weakens. No education system can flourish if intellectual ambition appears optional while seniority remains sufficient. The anomaly becomes even more striking when one examines the present hierarchy within many public colleges. It is no longer uncommon to find an MPhil-qualified lecturer or even a PhD serving under an officer whose highest

There is a common perception among experts that a new world order usually emerges after a world war or a major geopolitical event. Wars are caused by the irrational behavior of existing powers, illegal resource capture, and opposition to rising powers. These factors make the peaceful transition difficult. Thucydides’ Trap further explains the phenomenon. In modern history, World War I and World War II are often quoted as examples.   World War I began after Germany’s exponential growth and emergence as a new economic and global power. Germany’s efforts to enhance its influence further complicated the situation for existing powers such as the British Empire. It threatened them, and they started to conspire against Germany, especially after the launch of the Berlin-Baghdad railway line. The Berlin-Baghdad railway was considered a game-changing initiative for Europe and the Middle East. The British Empire negated it and built alliances with France; Russia, and later on, the USA helped them. World War II is considered a byproduct of the 1930s economic recession, Germany’s reemergence, Britain’s declining power, and the USA’s emergence as a new economic and global powerhouse.   World War I resulted in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Germany. It laid the first stone of the new empire, the USA. President Wilson tried to build on the fallen Empires and create a new world order through the League of Nations, but it could not sustain itself and ended with World War II. World War II ended with the collapse of Germany and the end of the two empires, the UK and Japan. After World War II, the USA emerged as a global empire and began crafting a new world order. Fortunately, it had the support of the USSR and China, which helped it create a new world order. However, after building a new world order, the USA turned against the USSR, and China laid the foundation of the Cold War Era.   The new system was built to continue the exploitation, but with new tools and strategies. With the end of World War II and the rise of freedom movements, the Western powers realized that the age of occupation and colonization had passed. It is not possible to enslave people physically. Thus, they pondered what new ways of controlling people should be. They identified the economy as a leading tool. Hence, they began devising tools to control the global economy. In the beginning, they leveraged the West’s production capacity to dominate the global economy. With the advent of globalization, they introduced tools to control supply chains and dominate markets by exerting absolute control over intellectual property rights, market rulemaking, and non-tariff barriers such as human rights, democracy, and the environment.  It led to the weaponization of the economy.   Simultaneously, they initiated the process to strengthen control over the financial system. The Bretton Woods institutions helped the USA and the West to dominate the global financial system. The US$ further consolidated its dominance as the leading global currency of global trade and reserves. Unfortunately, they also weaponized the global financial system.   However, with the dawn of the 21st century, they started to realize that new economic, technological, and trade powerhouses are emerging. These will challenge their dominance and exploitation. The rapid development and trade progress of the Global South further deepened their fears. China’s advances in technology and innovation made them worry about their future. However, China’s emergence as an alternative economic, trade, and technological power, challenging Western dominance in these areas, antagonized them.  After the launch of global initiatives such as GDI, GSI, BRI, GCI, GGI, AIIB, CIIE, and CIFTIS, among others, the West took off its gloves and began openly opposing China.   The West is opposing China, especially its BRI and technological aspects, just like the British and other powers opposed Germany’s rise and the Berlin-Baghdad railway line just before World War I. Therefore, many experts believe that the world is living under the threat of a looming third world war.   However, another school of thought claims the world is already in World War III, with different parameters. This time the battlefield would be trade, technology, and financial systems, as mentioned by an expert from Russia, Ms. Daria Para.   According to this theory, the world is already at war. President Trump has already intensified the trade war. He is using it as a tool to extract maximum benefit and consolidate the USA’s dominance over the global economic system. The USA is also not allowing any country to surpass it in the field of technology. First, in the late 90s and early 2000s, it compelled Japan to give up its dream of technological leadership. Now, the USA is doing everything to undermine Chinese advancements. It is sanctioning Chinese companies and compelling other nations to cut or restrict relations with China. Even the USA is creating challenges for Chinese students, as it considers them essential to technological development. Hence, admissions have dropped significantly. The USA has also weaponized the financial sector and is using it to penalize countries.   The war in these areas is deeply impacting humanity. It is aggravating inequality, food insecurity, and human suffering. This time, people are dying of malnutrition, unsafe water, poverty, and lack of opportunities for livelihoods, not with bullets or bombs. It is more painful and leaves lasting impacts on those who survive. Unfortunately, the war is intensifying in these fields. It is feared that soon it will lead to a hot war. First glimpses are already visible from the Iran-USA conflict, Russia-Ukraine conflict, regime change in Venezuela, blockade of Cuba, and conflicts in many other countries.   However, China and the Global South are still making every effort to avoid a third world war and create a new world order through reforms. The demand for reforms is rational and genuine, as due to flaws and inefficiencies of the existing order, inequality and poverty are on the rise and the world is facing the existential threat of climate change.

The recent press conference by ISPR Director General Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry was presented as a significant and comprehensive briefing outlining Pakistan’s strategic direction, national priorities, and approach to security, governance, economic stability, terrorism, and external interference. Lasting more than two hours in Rawalpindi, the briefing went beyond a routine security update by addressing sensitive national issues in detail and providing operational information supported by data, charts, and presentations. It emphasized transparency, offered the military’s perspective on the country’s security environment, and sought to provide clarity on the state’s actions and long-term plans. The conference highlighted the breadth of the challenges facing Pakistan and outlined what was described as a unified path forward, while emphasizing the armed forces’ commitment to national security and sovereignty. A central theme of the address was that good governance is essential for Pakistan’s long-term security and stability, with the argument that military operations alone cannot eliminate terrorism and extremism without stronger administrative and institutional capacity. The DG ISPR described security and governance as closely interconnected and cited the National Action Plan (NAP) as a consensus framework requiring effective implementation through measures such as countering extremist narratives, disrupting terror financing, and strengthening institutions. Referring to Pakistan’s population of around 240 to 250 million, he suggested reviewing whether the existing four-province administrative structure adequately serves the goal of good governance and said that, if an administrative reset is considered necessary, it should be decided by the country’s political leadership through constitutional and legal processes reflecting the will of the people. He also underscored the distinction between the military’s responsibility for security and the authority of civilian institutions over political and administrative reforms, reaffirming that such decisions should remain within the constitutional framework. A significant portion of the press conference was dedicated to providing a stark and detailed update on the country’s counterterrorism efforts, presenting an overwhelming amount of operational data. The DG ISPR revealed that security forces have conducted a staggering 40,348 intelligence-based operations (IBOs) across Pakistan so far in 2026, which averages to nearly 200 operations every single day. This relentless operational tempo is a testament to the proactive and aggressive posture adopted by the security forces to root out militancy from every corner of the country, leaving no safe haven for terrorists to operate. Of these, the majority—over 31,000—were carried out in Balochistan, underscoring the province’s central role in the national security strategy and the immense efforts being invested to bring stability to that region. He reported that a total of 3,145 terrorism incidents had taken place in the country in 2026, with 1,971 reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 1,148 from Balochistan, and 26 from other parts of the country. The results of these operations, he stated, have been significant, with 2,084 confirmed terrorists eliminated. This, he emphasized, translates to an average of 10 terrorists being killed every day, which he described as the highest operational ratio ever achieved in the country’s history. This high kill ratio is indicative of the intelligence-led nature of the operations, where precise targeting minimizes collateral damage and maximizes the impact on terrorist networks. However, he also acknowledged the heavy price paid for this peace, revealing that 819 Pakistanis have embraced martyrdom this year in the fight against terrorism. This somber figure includes 303 Pakistan Army personnel, 194 police and other law enforcement officials, and 322 innocent civilians. The sacrifice of these brave individuals, he noted, is a debt that can never be fully repaid, but it underscores the determination of the nation to prevail against the scourge of terrorism. He also disclosed that 28 suicide bombings have occurred nationwide, the majority of which, he alleged, were carried out by Afghan nationals. This disclosure highlighted the nexus between cross-border terrorism and the instability in Afghanistan, a point he elaborated on to stress the need for effective border management and regional cooperation. In a crucial clarification that resonated deeply with the public, the DG ISPR addressed the concept of a “hard state,” dispelling any misconceptions about its meaning. He explained that a “hard state” does not refer to military rule, nor does it imply a repressive or authoritarian regime. Instead, he defined it as a country where the Constitution and the rule of law are enforced equally for every individual without any discrimination or elitism. It is a system where all matters are resolved through constitutional and legal mechanisms, and where every citizen is equal before the law, regardless of their social or political standing. This vision of a “hard state” is fundamentally about strengthening the state’s institutions and legal frameworks to ensure justice and accountability for all, thereby creating a more stable and prosperous society where the rights of every citizen are protected. He used this definition to counter the narratives of those who fear a strong state, arguing that a “hard state” is the ultimate guarantor of democracy and individual freedoms, as it prevents the strong from exploiting the weak and ensures that the law is the supreme authority. Turning his focus to the complex security situation in Balochistan, the DG ISPR adopted a nuanced approach that combined a firm security stance with a clear commitment to development and public engagement. He firmly rejected the narrative that the security situation in the province is deteriorating, calling it a deliberate and coordinated campaign to create a false perception. He alleged that certain elite groups and tribal leaders (sardars) have historically opposed social progress to preserve their own power structures, and he stressed the need to empower the people of Balochistan instead of these traditional power brokers. The state’s priority, he declared, is to resolve the genuine grievances of the province’s residents while continuing decisive operations against militant groups who seek to disrupt the peace. He outlined a comprehensive development agenda for the province, detailing that the state would engage directly with the people of Balochistan rather than with disruptive elements. To this end, he highlighted that billions of rupees are being invested in socio-economic development projects across the province.