Trump talks, Iran denies, Pakistan mediates

Every 14 August, Pakistan awakens to the familiar colours of green and white. Flags appear on buildings, national songs fill the air, children dress in traditional colours, and speeches once again remind the nation of the sacrifices that accompanied independence. Yet Independence Day is not merely an occasion to celebrate the Pakistan we inherited; it is an opportunity to ask a more demanding question: What have we done with the Pakistan that was entrusted to us? On 14 August 1947, independence transformed millions of lives. Pakistan emerged from one of the most extraordinary political movements of the twentieth century, carrying the hopes of Muslims of the subcontinent for political security, social justice, dignity and the freedom to shape their collective future. Nearly eight decades later, the country possesses a substantial population, strategic importance, nuclear capability, a young generation, a resilient economy and a remarkable human resource. But the distance between Pakistan’s original aspirations and its contemporary realities remains a serious national question. The first mistake would be to interpret patriotism as silence about national shortcomings. Genuine patriotism requires the courage to identify weaknesses as well as the wisdom to recognise achievements. A country cannot strengthen itself by denying its problems. Nor can it progress through perpetual pessimism. Pakistan’s challenge in 2026 is therefore to move beyond both exaggerated self-congratulation and destructive cynicism. The political history of Pakistan demonstrates the consequences of institutional instability, confrontation and the excessive personalisation of politics. Governments have changed, political alliances have shifted, constitutions have been amended, and civilian and non-civilian institutions have repeatedly struggled over the appropriate boundaries of authority. The result has often been a political culture in which winning power becomes more important than strengthening institutions. This is particularly dangerous for a federation as diverse as Pakistan. Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and the regions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir possess distinct histories, cultures and political concerns. National unity cannot be imposed through administrative uniformity. It must be constructed through justice, representation, constitutionalism and an equitable distribution of opportunity. The recent political and social tensions surrounding Azad Jammu and Kashmir offer another reminder that national integration cannot depend exclusively upon slogans. Reports of violent protests, deaths and political grievances in the region demonstrate how quickly unresolved questions of representation, economic opportunity and political legitimacy can become matters of national concern. At the same time, the ongoing electoral process indicates that democratic participation remains an important mechanism through which political differences can be addressed. The lesson for Pakistan is broader than any particular political dispute: the federation becomes stronger when citizens believe that institutions listen to them. Religion presents another essential dimension of Pakistan’s identity. The country was created in the name of a political and social vision deeply connected with the religious consciousness of the Muslims of the subcontinent. But Islam cannot be reduced to national symbolism, political slogans or ceremonial references. Its deeper teachings demand justice, honesty, compassion, accountability, dignity and responsibility. The Qur’anic concept of Ummah is fundamentally connected with moral solidarity. It does not mean that differences disappear; rather, it teaches that human beings and communities are bound by principles of justice and mutual responsibility. The Qur’an repeatedly places justice at the centre of social life. Consequently, a religiously inspired Pakistan should not merely ask whether society looks Islamic from the outside. It should ask whether the weak receive justice, whether public resources are protected from corruption, whether the powerful are accountable, whether minorities live with dignity, and whether the poor have meaningful opportunities to improve their lives. Pakistan’s constitutional framework itself reflects this relationship between Islamic values and democratic citizenship. The Objectives Resolution, incorporated into the Constitution, describes democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as principles to be observed, while also affirming the rights of minorities to freely profess and practise their religions and develop their cultures. This constitutional balance is important because religious identity and citizenship should not be presented as competing ideas. A confident Islamic state does not need discrimination to demonstrate its faith. It demonstrates its moral strength through justice. Protection of minorities is not a concession to another culture; it is part of the constitutional and ethical responsibility of the state. Pakistan’s social crisis, meanwhile, is perhaps more complicated than its political crisis. Millions of Pakistanis continue to demonstrate extraordinary resilience, entrepreneurship and generosity. Pakistani professionals have achieved distinction around the world, while ordinary citizens routinely support relatives, neighbours and communities in times of hardship. Yet social inequality, unemployment, educational disparities, population pressure, inflationary pressures and unequal access to healthcare continue to limit the potential of a large part of the population. The most important national resource is not the country’s geography, minerals or strategic position. It is its people. A nation with a young population cannot afford an education system that merely produces certificates. Pakistan needs education that produces critical thinkers, scientists, entrepreneurs, skilled workers, ethical professionals and responsible citizens. Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming economies and professions, making it even more urgent for Pakistan to reform its educational priorities rather than simply expand enrolment. The same principle applies to women and young people. A country cannot speak convincingly about development while large sections of its human capital remain underutilised. Pakistan’s future competitiveness will depend increasingly upon the quality of its education, digital capacity, scientific research, vocational training and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Independence also has an international dimension. Pakistan’s geography has historically placed it at the intersection of major geopolitical interests. Its relationship with China, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, the Gulf states, the United States, Europe, Afghanistan and other regional partners reflects the complexity of its strategic environment. But the strongest foreign policy is ultimately built upon domestic strength. Economic stability, political credibility, social cohesion and institutional continuity provide a stronger foundation for diplomacy than dependence upon temporary geopolitical alignments. National security, therefore, should be understood in a broader sense. A secure Pakistan is not merely one with strong borders and capable armed forces. It is also a Pakistan where a child can

God had bestowed a vast and expansive empire upon Tsar Nicholas II. He was the King of Russia. He had only one son, who was born with a disease called hemophilia. This is a disease due to which the body’s ability to clot blood decreases; even a small wound causes excessive bleeding, placing the patient’s life in severe danger. The child was treated, but there was no improvement. One day, the famous Russian occultist Rasputin reached the child and performed some specific practices; astonishingly, the child recovered. Empress Alexandra was deeply impressed by this act and accepted Rasputin as her spiritual guide (Peer). The Empress not only provided him residence in the royal palace but also began taking his advice on state affairs. Rasputin was an extremely clever man. Through his words and practices, he captivated the royal family. When the First World War began in 1914, Russia suffered significant losses. Nicholas II left to take command of the army, because of which Empress Alexandra’s reliance on Rasputin increased further, and Rasputin also began taking an interest in political affairs. Gradually, he bound the King and the royal family within the spell of his words, and now he began interfering fully in the affairs of the country. Government ministers were unhappy with Rasputin’s immense popularity but were forced to accept his decisions. However, the public openly began criticizing the royal family because Rasputin was considered a corrupt person. This process continued in this manner. He would get his favored people appointed to important positions, because of which corruption reached its peak in the country; finally, the vessel of the public’s patience overflowed, and in 1917, protests began against the government. The royal family was still a follower of Rasputin, the result of which turned out to be very horrific. Public wrath intensified, Tsar Nicholas II was assassinated, and his regime was overthrown. The central character of this exemplary story was Rasputin, who, by conquering the minds of the royal family, made them make decisions as a result of which the world’s largest empire was destroyed. When an individual becomes so influenced by someone’s words or by a captivating sight that they forget everything and get lost in it, and their logical mind stops working, this state is called the “Alpha State.” In this condition, brain waves move at a specific speed and focus the individual’s attention on a single point. Taking advantage of this very state, certain short-sighted individuals fill the minds of innocent people with negative thoughts and incite them toward destruction. Rasputin’s example is the negative side of the “Alpha State”; however, it also has a positive side, which, if we learn to use, can yield astonishing results. There are five states of the mind, which in mind sciences are called Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta, Gamma. Beta is the state of waking, in which we perform daily tasks. Alpha is the state of drowsiness and physical and mental relaxation. Theta is the state of sleep. Delta is the state of deep sleep, while Gamma is the state of extreme focus. In the Gamma state, a human can perform mental activities in a full-fledged manner. The Alpha State is the name of the intermediate condition between wakefulness and sleep (drowsiness). It acts as a bridge between the conscious and subconscious state. In this state, the brain’s alpha waves are between 8 to 12 Hertz. After reaching the Alpha State, a human’s brain and body become synchronized, the brain accepts things quickly, and the individual can organize their thoughts and memories in a better way. The “Alpha State” is a state of peace. When we were in the mother’s womb, even then we were in the “Alpha State.” There, all our needs were met, and we were free from all kinds of worries. The world’s greatest creation occurs in the “Alpha State.” Look at music. Behind other creations, there is some preparation or another, whereas music is something behind which there is nothing; a thought suddenly comes to the musician’s mind, and from it, a melody begins to form. This work also occurs in the Alpha State. Communication becomes very easy in the Alpha State. If you want to see an excellent example of this, look at the relationship between a mother and child. Sometimes the child is many miles away from the mother, but even without any contact, the mother senses their pain. In daily life, we pass through this condition many times. For instance, while watching a movie, we get completely lost in a scene; sometimes while reading a novel, we begin to consider ourselves a character of that very novel and become oblivious to our surroundings. Sometimes the words of a sweet-tongued speaker mesmerize us. Sometimes a beautiful sight captures us in its spell. It is said that a snake and flowing water also hypnotize humans. All these conditions are of the “Alpha State,” and whatever message enters the brain in this state becomes a part of our personality. Our brain keeps running all the time. It runs our senses. For example, if the eyes close, the brain becomes alert. To assess the situation, it instructs the ears to strengthen the process of hearing and assess what is happening. If the ears also close, it increases the capacity of smell, taste, and touch. In short, until it is satisfied that there is no danger, it does not become peaceful. Remaining alert all the time is not good for psychological and mental health; therefore, it is necessary for a human to go into the Alpha State for some time and make their brain peaceful. In today’s writing, we will try to clarify to what extent we can achieve the best results from the correct use of the “Alpha State.” First of all, it is necessary to understand how we can enter the “Alpha State” voluntarily. The easy way to enter the Alpha State is meditation. Sit in a comfortable place and take deep breaths. Focus your attention

By Hamza Bio: The author is a student at LUMS from Quetta, Baluchistan, majoring in political science. Cobwebs clung to the corners. Old things lay strewn across the floor. Musty air permeated the room, heavy with a dense smell. And there lay Muntaha, old enough to shoulder a schoolbag, yet young enough to trust that the world outside would not betray her. A seven-year-old child assaulted, raped, and murdered. Was it an aberration, a crime so atrocious that it crossed the bounds of abomination—liable to be dismissed as the work of a depraved mind? Facts offer an utterly different story. Eighteen-month-old Aizal recently met the same fate. Mir Raza, a young IBA graduate and a thriving businessman with a promising life stretching before him, was robbed of his life; his post-mortem examination revealed traces of acid and marks of torture that his body bore. Different names. Different stories. Yet testifying to the same grim pattern that recurs persistently. And perhaps more distressing is our habituation to it: another story breaks, headlines saturate social media feeds, condolences arrive, vacuous promises follow, and eventually, the outrage subsides. Until it happens again. With each gruelling episode, our emotional responses are sapped. That which once transfixed us with horror now hardly unsettles us. The gravity does not diminish; we resign ourselves to the dismal reality. What’s even more disturbing is the gradual erosion of our capacity to acutely realise the weight of these atrocities. This phenomenon ought not to be labelled as apathy. Apathy is much simpler: it is the vacancy of feeling. What we are experiencing is something far more pernicious: a gradual distortion of our senses, recalibrating what we consider shocking. We are undergoing an unconscious normalisation and readjustment to realities that are far from normal. Accustomed to darkness, we watch the very conception of light wither away. We do not cease to care. We require more to feel the same empathy and gravitas that were once instantly evoked. The implications of this shifting baseline are dire. Now for a story to break through, it requires something more heart-rending. It must involve fire, a child, acid, or a lynching to pierce through the noise—although briefly. We have not become cruel; our threshold has changed, filtering out and grading horrors on a curve. And the worst part? We scarcely realise the higher standard that we establish. There is a peculiar cruelty that this readjustment entails. No one consents to feel less over a murdered child, an acid attack, or a sexual assault. It unfolds and creeps in us in increments: one story, one headline, one brutality, one brief sigh. Until the sum of it all is a society that can read about Aizal, Muntaha, and Mir Raza in a single sitting, with its emotional faculties completely exhausted. The prevailing emotion changes from fury to fatigue. What we are surrendering, with each successive case, is not compassion; it is accountability. Accountability when it matters the most, until the headlines fade away from our feeds, the case is buried in the docket, and the victim is swallowed by history—before another name appears to draw another sigh of grief. A society that, though unconsciously, decides to exist beside crimes instead of demanding a reckoning for the culpable is perpetually doomed to remain rife with them because the ability to feel, to question, and to compel accountability has been effectively degraded. The outcome of it all is not that we will turn a blind eye to the horrors; we will grieve—briefly, outrageously, sincerely, and uselessly. Our grief will remain precisely in the same fashion but will fail to prevent such abhorrent acts because the mechanism that might have translated outrage into tangible outcome has been rendered inoperative through the desensitising monotony of repetition. The result? A society that has stopped reacting meaningfully. Brief outcry coupled with a hollow response results in a late, defanged, or no outcome at all. The perpetrators, who may have been deterred by the consequences, now have less to dread. Thus, further crime is bred, and its miscreants emboldened. Desensitization is a distinct peril from the crimes that breed it in the first place. It consistently curtails the cost of crime for everyone still capable of inflicting it. When the very alarm that stirs our conscience has been paralysed, a subtle message is whispered that another child, another toddler, or another youth awaits the same fate as Muntaha, Aizal, or Mir Raza.  

For a few hours this week, it looked like Washington and Riyadh had quietly closed one of the more consequential files of Donald Trump’s second term. On Wednesday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, a deal years in the making, offering American firms a foothold in a market Riyadh has long promised and long withheld. Then, a day later, the president reopened it himself. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump declared the agreement “will be approved,” but added that it was “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” He also inserted a second condition that had not been part of the signed text: no enrichment of nuclear material on Saudi soil. Within hours, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was telling reporters the deal was simply “off” unless the kingdom normalised relations with Israel, even though, by her own account, the president had not actually spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since posting the ultimatum. It is worth sitting with how unusual this is. A nuclear cooperation agreement, negotiated over years and signed by cabinet level officials on both sides, was retroactively rewritten by a presidential social media post, with the Saudi government left to respond through silence, and American wire services unable to get so much as a background comment out of Riyadh. Steven Cook, a Middle East scholar quoted by NPR, put the underlying question bluntly: whether “a social post supersede a signed diplomatic agreement.” That a serious foreign policy analyst even has to ask the question tells its own story about how this White House does business. The Saudi position, however, is not new, and it is not merely stubbornness. The kingdom has said for years, through King Salman and now through the Crown Prince, that normalisation with Israel requires a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood. That position survived the first Trump term’s Abraham Accords push, the Biden administration’s own normalisation efforts, and it hardened further after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. Riyadh’s calculus is also generational: across the Arab and Muslim world, sympathy for the Palestinian cause remains a live political fact that no government, however close to Washington, can casually override. There is also an Israeli dimension worth naming honestly. Israel’s own unease was never really about Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear ambitions; officials have signalled for months that they had made peace with the idea, provided it came bundled with normalisation. What Israeli commentators and officials appear to actually fear is a Saudi Arabia empowered, prestige laden, and unbound to the Accords: a regional heavyweight whose recognition Israel still needs, and has not been granted, absent a resolution nobody has yet found for the Palestinians. That is the crux the deal has now run into, and it is not a problem Trump’s Truth Social account can post its way out of. None of this means the deal is necessarily dead. Trump has a long history of issuing maximalist conditions in public while negotiating something narrower in private, and Saudi Arabia has strong economic and strategic incentives of its own to keep the nuclear track alive. But the manner in which this condition was added, abruptly, publicly, and without prior coordination with Riyadh, is itself a signal worth reading. It suggests an American approach to the region that still assumes the old leverage of the first Abraham Accords era holds unchanged, even as the ground beneath it, in Gaza’s aftermath and in Saudi public opinion, has shifted considerably. Whether Washington adjusts to that reality, or simply keeps repeating the demand more loudly, will say a great deal about how the rest of this file plays out.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that sets in when a war refuses to end on schedule. Five months into the conflict between the United States and Iran, we are living through it. Ceasefires are announced and collapse within weeks. Strikes are billed as decisive and are followed, days later, by more strikes. Each side insists the other will soon come to its senses, and each side is wrong. What we are watching is not a war moving toward resolution. It is a war that has become self-sustaining, and the longer it runs, the more countries get pulled into its logic whether they wanted a role in it or not. Saudi Arabia is the clearest example. For nearly four years, Riyadh had quietly extracted itself from the Yemen war, treating the 2022 ceasefire with the Houthis as one of the few unambiguous foreign policy wins of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tenure. That restraint is now gone. When the Houthis resumed missile fire at Israel in solidarity with Tehran, and then began striking Saudi oil infrastructure directly, Riyadh had no real choice but to respond. It bombed Hodeidah. The Houthis retaliated against Aramco facilities in Yanbu and Jizan. A conflict Saudi Arabia spent years trying to bury is now, again, live on its border, not because Riyadh chose it but because a war between Washington and Tehran left no room for neutrality. This is the pattern worth naming plainly: nobody in this conflict is fighting the war they intended to fight. Washington launched its campaign framed around Iran’s nuclear program, wagering that decisive strikes would force capitulation or collapse. Instead it has strikes running past the two-week mark with no clear terminus, American service members killed in Jordan and Iraq, and a president publicly conceding that the exit could be “diplomatic or military” — which is another way of saying nobody currently knows how this ends. Iran, for its part, has responded to devastating strikes on its cities not with capitulation but with exactly the kind of asymmetric, proxy-driven defiance its doctrine was built for, activating fronts in Iraq, the Gulf, and now Yemen that cost it little and cost everyone else a great deal. The Strait of Hormuz tells the same story in economic terms. Daily vessel traffic through one of the world’s most important oil chokepoints has fallen to a small fraction of its prewar level. That is not an abstraction. It shows up in tanker insurance premiums in Piraeus and London, in fuel costs in Mumbai and Rotterdam, in the balance sheets of countries that have precisely nothing to do with this fight. War aims that once seemed narrowly bilateral — Washington versus Tehran, over centrifuges and missile stockpiles — have metastasized into a tax on global trade that nobody voted for and nobody can opt out of. It is tempting, watching this unfold, to look for a single culprit. Commentators sympathetic to Washington will point to Iran’s decades of proxy warfare, its nuclear ambiguity, its crackdown on its own protesters, and argue the current campaign is simply overdue accountability. Commentators sympathetic to Tehran will point to a US-Israeli strike that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and ask what state, faced with the assassination of its head of state, would not treat that as an act of war demanding a response. Both arguments contain real grievances. Neither survives contact with what has actually happened since: a conflict that both sides insist is about narrow, defensible aims but that neither side has been able to keep narrow. Wars rarely stay the size their architects intend. What should worry observers most is not any single strike or retaliation but the absence of an exit ramp anyone believes in. Ceasefires here have not functioned as steps toward peace; they have functioned as pauses for rearmament, evidenced by how quickly each one has collapsed back into nightly bombing. That is the signature of a conflict without a theory of victory — one where both governments can inflict real pain on the other indefinitely, but where neither can convert that pain into a settlement it can sell to its own public. In that kind of war, the fighting does not stop because someone wins. It stops, if it stops, because the costs finally exceed what either government’s domestic politics can absorb — and on the evidence of the past five months, that threshold keeps receding rather than approaching. Saudi Arabia’s reluctant return to the Yemen battlefield should be read as an early warning rather than a footnote. It shows how a conflict that both Washington and Tehran describe as fundamentally about themselves keeps finding new participants who never agreed to join. If this war continues on its current trajectory, the question worth asking is not which superpower prevails, but how many other countries, currencies, and shipping lanes get quietly conscripted before it does.

Since its inception, Pakistan has been confronted with a multitude of complex and interwoven challenges that have persistently constrained its political stability, economic progress, institutional development, and social transformation. While the nature and intensity of these challenges have evolved over time, their cumulative impact has continued to impede the country’s pursuit of sustainable development and national prosperity. Among these enduring national challenges, the governance crisis has emerged as one of the most pressing concerns, posing serious implications for sustainable development, institutional resilience, socioeconomic progress, and the country’s long-term stability. A number of instances can be quoted to highlight the dismal situation of governance in Pakistan. The very first among these is the lack of citizens’ interest in participation. Citizens are not sufficiently aware of their participatory rights; therefore, they do not keep an eye on public officials and don’t raise their voices when their legal rights are violated by the elite class of the state. Moreover, in terms of transparency, Pakistan is far behind the required standards. According to the 2025 Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International, Pakistan scored 28 out of 100 and ranked 136th out of 182 countries, indicating a high perceived level of public sector corruption. Furthermore, it is our bad luck that the situation of the rule of law has always been in trouble since 1947. Unfortunately, the rule of law has been confined to the conventional concept of law enforcement, internal security, and crime control, while, at the same time, it overlooks the basic elements, including transparency, accountability before the law, and the equal, just, and clear application of the law. Although, the state has numerous accountability committees and agencies to hold corrupt individuals accountable and curb corrupt practices in society. But still, the state is struggling to implement accountability in its true sense. Ignoring the major causes that have led to the deplorable situation of governance in Pakistan would be totally unjust. These include a number of factors that have directly or indirectly facilitated its existence. In this context, political instability is the biggest cause of bad governance in Pakistan. For most of the time, a myopic approach is adopted by political parties to establish their own governments. They remain engaged in the struggle for power while toppling governments by hook or by crook. Likewise, the relevant institutions do not respond immediately to the emergence of new challenges, leading to dearth of responsiveness in institution’s working.   In addition to it, the lack of strategic vision of the political leadership is also a factor which hits the structure of governance in Pakistan. Quite understandably, Political leaders have failed to foresee Pakistan’s emerging challenges and to cope with the persistent challenges that the state has been confronting for a long time. Keeping in view the crunch of governance, whom should be blamed and held accountable? It is the need of the hour that well-crafted and result-oriented policies regarding governance be formulated and effectively implemented to address the issue in its true spirit. Social media should play its crucial role in spreading awareness. Democracy should be strengthened. Posting, transfer, and promotion of bureaucrats should be done on merit. Last but not the least, the right to information should be guaranteed to citizens as provided under Article 19A of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. These bold steps can place Pakistan in the list of countries having good governance.