Higher Education Opportunities for Pakistani Stude…

In the hierarchical world of international diplomacy, mediation between adversaries is traditionally the preserve of foreign ministries and veteran envoys. In recent months, that role has been assumed, unusually, by a uniformed officer from Islamabad.   General Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, has moved beyond the conventional mandate of an army chief to position himself as a conduit for de-escalation at a moment of acute global volatility. His emergence as an interlocutor during the recent period of heightened confrontation between the United States and Iran, and his parallel effort to formalize defense cooperation between Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, marks a significant shift in how Pakistan projects power and how regional security is being negotiated.   The development raises a central question for international observers: can a military leader serve as a credible bridge-builder in a region where traditional diplomacy has stalled?   From Barracks to Backchannels   To understand General Munir’s diplomatic turn, context is essential.   Pakistan has long balanced a complex set of alliances. It is a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States, with decades of security cooperation, while also maintaining a 900-kilometer border with Iran and deep cultural and economic ties with its western neighbor. That dual positioning has often placed Islamabad in a difficult spot during US-Iran escalations, but it has also given it unique access.   General Munir, who previously served as Director General of Military Intelligence and Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence, is seen within Pakistan’s security establishment as an institutionalist with deep familiarity with both Gulf and Western security concerns.   According to diplomatic sources in Islamabad and Ankara, it was during the peak of US-Iran tensions earlier this year, when direct channels were limited and rhetoric was escalating, that General Munir engaged in a series of quiet consultations. The approach, described by one senior Pakistani official as “military diplomacy focused on de-confliction,” involved relaying assessments and emphasizing the cost of miscalculation to all sides.   In Washington, the priority was to avoid a broader regional conflict that would endanger US forces and global energy supplies. In Tehran, the priority was to prevent further isolation while maintaining deterrence. Pakistan’s message, as articulated by its military leadership, was consistent: dialogue over confrontation.   While the full extent of the mediation remains confidential, as is common in such backchannels, analysts in Washington noted a distinct softening of public statements from all parties following a round of regional visits that included Pakistan. A former US State Department official familiar with South Asia said, “When civilian political space is constrained, military-to-military channels become the most reliable mechanism for crisis management.”   The Trilateral Gambit   If the US-Iran de-escalation effort established General Munir’s credentials as a crisis manager, his second initiative is more structural in nature.   In recent weeks, officials from Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have confirmed discussions toward a shared defense understanding. The framework, still under negotiation, is understood to focus on defense industrial cooperation, joint training, counter-terrorism intelligence sharing, and interoperability rather than a NATO-style collective defense treaty.   For each country, the rationale is different but complementary.   For Saudi Arabia, under Vision 2030, there is a clear drive toward diversifying its defense partnerships and building domestic defense manufacturing capacity. Turkey brings a rapidly advancing defense industry, with its drone programs and naval systems. Pakistan offers a large, battle-tested military, nuclear deterrence expertise, and extensive experience in counter-terrorism operations.   “This is not about creating a bloc against anyone,” a Turkish defense analyst explained. “It is about strategic self-reliance. For decades, these three countries have been dependent on external suppliers. They are now asking whether they can co-produce and co-secure.”   For Pakistan, the pact represents a long-sought goal: moving from being a security consumer dependent on external aid to being a security provider and partner among major Muslim-majority states. For General Munir, who has repeatedly spoken about the link between economic security and national security, such partnerships are seen as central to national stability.   Perspectives and Challenges   The reception has been cautiously optimistic but not without complexity.   In Riyadh and Ankara, the initiative is viewed through the lens of pragmatic national interest rather than ideological unity. Saudi and Turkish officials have been careful to frame any cooperation as open and defensive, not directed at any third party, including Iran or Western allies.   In Washington and European capitals, the reaction is twofold. On one hand, there is recognition that a trilateral arrangement that increases burden-sharing and promotes stability could be beneficial, particularly if it helps contain transnational threats. On the other hand, there are questions about interoperability with existing alliances and the long-term implications for arms procurement and regional alignments.   In Tehran, observers have watched the developments closely. Any defense cooperation that excludes Iran will inevitably be scrutinized. Pakistani diplomats have sought to reassure Iran that Islamabad’s engagement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey does not come at Tehran’s expense, pointing to the earlier mediation effort as evidence of Pakistan’s balanced approach.   The most significant challenges are internal. Trilateral defense cooperation requires sustained political will, financial commitments, and harmonization of defense systems  all of which are difficult to achieve. Pakistan faces severe economic constraints, Turkey navigates its commitments to NATO, and Saudi Arabia is managing a complex regional normalization process.   Critics within Pakistan also question whether the military should be leading diplomatic initiatives that are traditionally the domain of the Foreign Office. Supporters counter that in Pakistan’s hybrid governance structure, the army chief is inevitably a central actor in foreign and security policy, and formalizing that role can bring clarity.   The Diplomat in Uniform   The broader phenomenon of the “diplomat in uniform” is not new. In Egypt, Jordan, and indeed in the United States itself, senior military leaders have often served as critical channels when civilian diplomacy has faltered.   What makes General Munir’s case distinct is the narrative he is projecting for Pakistan itself: from a country

Like other developing countries around the globe, Pakistan also seeks to optimize a higher and impact-oriented investment rate in order to achieve higher and sustainable economic growth. In this regard, Pakistan’s development partners provide knowledge advisory and financial assistance to support implementation of economic reforms that will spur sustainable economic growth. The priority of the incumbent federal government headed by Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif is to undertake development partners’ engagements around two key objectives: (i) achieve sustainable social and economic growth as envisioned in its development plans to reduce poverty and inequality, and to create equitable access to social services and create employment opportunities for the youth, and (ii) address the external and fiscal imbalances for enhanced macroeconomic stability. The disbursement of Foreign Economic Assistance (FEA) remained low during the financial year 2025-26, as against budgeted figures of Rs 5777654.488 million, foreign assistance received was Rs 5024516.997 million. For the new financial year 2026-27, Pakistan was most likely to receive Rs 6779624.460 million (US $ 23.38 billion) from its development partners. Breakup-wise, Pakistan will be borrowing US $ 400.422 million (Rs 116122.423 million) from bilateral resources, US $ 4866.223 million (Rs 1411204.727 million) from multilateral resources, (US $ 235.000 million) from foreign commercial banks, US $ 12000.00 million (Rs 3480000.000 million) through bilateral deposit, US $ 1122.370 million (Rs 325487.300 million) through Naya Pakistan Certificate, and US $ 530.000 million (Rs 153700.000 million) from International Monetary Fund (IMF). Foreign assistance secured by Pakistan from its development partners also include, as usual, foreign aid for autonomous bodies such as WAPDA (Power), National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), National Highway Authority (NHA), and Power Division. Higher Education Commission (HEC) and SUPARCO were among the autonomous bodies who also received foreign assistance during the financial year 2025-26, but both of these were not among the foreign assistance beneficiaries somehow for the just commenced fiscal year 2026-27. Figures have been avoided for want of space, please. External resources, as per information available from the official sources, are derived from a combination of financing instruments, including project loans and grants, programme loans and other loans. Project loans and grants are received from specialised International Financial Institutions and friendly countries with specific purposes; project loans and grants for Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) are received for various projects being executed by Federal Government, Provincial Governments and various Autonomous Bodies such as WAPDA, PEPCO, NHA, etc.; there are certain projects which are kept out of PSDP and executed by Federal and Provincial Governments and Autonomous Bodies by receiving project loans and grants; programme loans are provided for budgetary support and are linked/tied with achievement of specific targets and goals; and other loans comprise of loans from Islamic Development Bank, Sovereign Bonds, Sukuk Bonds, etc. raised from non-traditional sources. Bilateral sources included China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. Multilateral sources included Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), EIB, International Bank for Reconstruction & Development (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), IsDB, PEC Fund and the United Nations, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There was no Saudi Arabia Time Deposit and no SAFE China Deposit commitments for the financial year 2026-27. World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and IsDB were the major multilateral development partners who have conducted important diagnostic studies as well as formulated well-aligned medium-term country partnership strategies. Developments in Pakistan’s economy were also being closely monitored and rated by important rating agencies like Fitch, Moody’s and S & P which help Pakistan in accessing capital markets. Support from development partners and international financial institutions is critical to implementing the federal government’s agenda for sustained and balanced development for the people. The aim and objective of seeking foreign or external financial assistance can be stated as “promoting economic and social development in the developing countries.” It can also be defined as “Administered transfer of resources from a donor country or international financial agency to the developing countries with a view to encourage economic growth.” Foreign aid can be in the form of money, goods or technical assistance and can also be between two (bilateral) or many (multilateral) countries/institutions. Foreign aid is also looked for to meet both the economy’s balance of payments gap and investment gap. That is why project and technical assistance alone are not sufficient.

“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 Dr. Shahzad Ali Gill There are two numbers Pakistan’s policymakers should learn to say in the same breath. The first is USD 100 billion, which the Ministry of Maritime Affairs (MoMA) believes the blue economy could be worth every year if the country’s coastline, fisheries, shipping lanes and offshore basins were properly developed. The second is USD 5.8 bn, what a single badly handled investment agreement, in a mining project nowhere near the sea, once cost the national exchequer in an international arbitration award. Until we learn to think about these two numbers together, the first will remain a slogan and the second will remain a warning we keep failing to heed. Pakistan’s maritime endowment is not in question. The country has a coastline of 1,001 kilometres along Sindh and Balochistan, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 240,000 square kilometres, expanded by a further 50,000 square kilometres continental shelf claim that the United Nations approved back in 2015. And yet, by the MoMA’s own reckoning, the blue economy, shipping, fisheries, offshore energy, coastal tourism and the activity that clusters around them contribute barely 0.4 per cent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or about USD 1bn a year. The same ministry has set its sights on USD 100 bn annually through “Maritime@100”, a roadmap to reach that target by 2047, at a time when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) projects the global ocean economy will exceed USD 3 trillion by 2030. According to the 2026 report of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the ocean trade has already reached USD 2.5 tn in 2025. The gap between what Pakistan has and what it is leaving on the table is, by any measure, enormous. Closing that gap will not happen through speeches. It will happen, almost entirely, through two unglamorous legal instruments that include concession agreements and implementation agreements. A concession agreement grants a private party the right to finance, build, and operate a public asset – a port, most often – for a fixed term in exchange for tariffs or a share of revenue, with the asset reverting to the state once the term ends, a model commonly called build-operate-transfer or build-own-operate-transfer (BOT/BOOT). An implementation agreement works differently. It is a direct undertaking between the government and a project company, sitting alongside a commercial contract such as a power purchase agreement (PPA), through which the state offers sovereign guarantees, regulatory consents and tax assurances without handing over rights to any public asset. Every deep-sea port, LNG terminal, and offshore drilling concession Pakistan signs over the next two decades will be built on one or the other. That is precisely why getting their terms right matters the most. What Gwadar already taught us We do not need to imagine how this plays out; we have Gwadar. The original Gwadar Port Concession Agreement, signed in 2007 between the Gwadar Port Authority (GPA) and a foreign operator, Singapore Port Authority (SPA), and later transferred to the China Overseas Ports Holding Company (COPHC) in 2013, carried a 20-year corporate tax exemption and a government revenue share of 9% of port income plus 15% from the adjoining Special Economic Zone (SEZ). That should have been the ceiling. Instead, between 2015 and 2020, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet extended the income tax holiday to 23 years, widened it to cover contractors and sub-contractors as well, and granted the 923-hectare Gwadar Free Zone a land lease running up to 99 years. Each renegotiation made the deal more generous to the investor, never less. That is the pattern to watch for since the concessions in Pakistan rarely tighten once signed. They only ever loosen. This should trouble us more than it does, because Article 77 of the Constitution reserves the power to levy federal taxes exclusively for Parliament. Yet most of these concession-era tax holidays and customs exemptions are not legislated at all; they arrive through Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) and amendments to existing tax schedules, executive instruments that nonetheless bind the state for 20 to 40 years at a stretch. And Gwadar is not the exception; it is the template. The number of special economic zones (SEZs) has surged from seven to 44, under the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), carrying broadly similar concession packages. Every one of them represents a slice of fiscal sovereignty quietly signed away by the executive, on terms that no future Parliament will find easy to unwind. The warning we already received If Gwadar shows how concessions deepen, Reko Diq shows what happens when they collapse, and although it is a mining dispute, not a maritime one, the lesson is structural, not sectoral. After Balochistan denied a mining lease to the Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) in 2011 and the Supreme Court of Pakistan voided the underlying exploration agreement in 2013, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled against Pakistan in 2019 under the Pakistan-Australia Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), awarding damages of roughly USD 5.8 bn, one of the largest sums in the history of ICSID. A separate dispute brought by the Turkish power producer Karkey under the Pakistan-Turkey BIT had already cost the country USD 760 million the year before. Both were eventually settled out of court. Reko Diq in 2022, with Barrick Gold taking a 50 per cent stake alongside federal state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the Balochistan government, each holding 25%, but the exposure that produced those numbers in the first place has not gone away. Every offshore exploration block, port concession, and LNG agreement Pakistan signs carries almost the same treaty protections and the same risk of ending up before the same arbitration tribunals. The other half of the bargain There is a second risk that rarely gets discussed alongside the first. The Foreign Exchange Manual issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA), 1947, governs how the profits, dividends, and disinvestment proceeds promised under these agreements can actually leave the country.

Pakistan was achieved on the fourteenth of August in the year nineteen hundred and forty-seven, after sacrifices of a magnitude that still stir the soul and a struggle whose tirelessness remains an enduring lesson. Millions crossed borders in those turbulent months, leaving behind ancestral homes, familial graves, and the familiar soil of generations, so that a new homeland might rise where Muslims could live according to their faith and their free will. We stand now upon the threshold of the eighth decade of that hard-won independence. I, a Pakistani by birth and by conviction, have myself lived nearly fifty-eight years within the borders of this free land. This country conferred upon me an identity that no foreign power could erase, furnished me with the means of an independent existence—schools in which to learn, roads upon which to travel, markets in which to earn my bread—bestowed a measure of respect in the eyes of the world, and, in some degree, granted me a name among my fellows. Yet the question returns, quietly and persistently, like a debt long deferred; what have I given in return? Have I ever paused long enough, in the press of daily concerns, to weigh that debt with honesty? The same inquiry must be put, with equal seriousness and without partiality, to the institutions that were meant to serve as the pillars of the state, and to the rulers and authorities who have held power through these eighty years. What account can they render of their stewardship? Parliament was intended as the voice of the people; the courts as the guardians of justice; the civil service as the steady hand of administration; the universities as the nurseries of thought and character. Have these bodies discharged their duties with fidelity, or have they at times become arenas of personal ambition, partisan calculation, and the slow corrosion of public trust? The rulers who succeeded one another, whether civilian or military, received the same inheritance of soil, of people, and of hope. What have they added to the national store of justice, of prosperity, of self-respect, and of unity? The record is mixed, and the gaps are painful to contemplate. Have we, as a people, ever undertaken a true reckoning of our collective performance—not the ritual of speeches on national days, but a sober examination of conscience? And if such an accounting was made, did it lead to any genuine reformation of our ways, or did we merely resume the old habits once the anniversary had passed? Where, in truth, does Pakistan stand as a state at this present hour? We possess a land rich in rivers and fertile plains, a people endowed with resilience and talent, a strategic position that nature itself seems to have marked for consequence. Yet we continue to wrestle with the burdens of poverty that still touch too many homes, with the lingering shadows of disorder in parts of the country, with the uneasy balance between institutions that ought to complement one another, and with the persistent temptation to place private gain above the common good. Have we preserved, or have we frittered away, the sacred trust that our ancestors placed in our hands when they bequeathed us this country? That trust was not lightly given. It demanded vigilance against tyranny, honesty in public dealing, a willingness to educate the young in both knowledge and character, and a readiness to place the welfare of the whole above the advantage of the few. Looking back across the decades, one is compelled to ask whether that demand has been met in full measure. I do not exempt myself from this examination. For nearly six decades I have drawn from the well of national life—the protection of law, the opportunity to work and to speak, the simple privilege of calling myself a citizen of a free land. Have my contributions matched the gifts received? Have I laboured, in whatever sphere was allotted me, to strengthen rather than weaken the fabric of the republic? Have I spoken truth when silence was easier, practised fairness when partiality promised profit, and taught the rising generation that freedom is not a birthright to be consumed but a responsibility to be renewed? Honesty requires that each of us answer such questions in the solitude of his own heart, without the convenient shield of collective excuses or the comfortable habit of blaming those who came before. Enough, then, of evasion. The hour has come for every citizen, high or low, including the writer of these lines, to conduct a personal audit. Let each examine what he has taken and what he has returned. Let the institutions examine their fidelity to the purposes for which they were created. Let those who hold authority examine whether their decisions have served the enduring interests of the state or the fleeting interests of the moment. Only through such unsparing self-examination, followed by the hard work of reform, can the trust of the founders be renewed and the promise of Pakistan still be fulfilled for those who will inherit what we leave behind.