Who Is Responsible for the Truth?

By Ali Hiader A certain segment in Pakistan has been gaining momentum in arguing that had dictator General Pervez Musharraf—like Imran Khan—said “Absolutely Not” to Washington, Pakistan might have been spared the scourge of terrorism and the subsequent economic hardships. However, such an argument attempts to view the decision made in 2001 through the lens of circumstances that emerged years later. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shook the United States and sent shockwaves through the global order; approximately 3,000 people lost their lives, and institutions regarded globally as symbols of American economic and military might were targeted. These attacks challenged the security of the world’s sole superpower and generated intense public pressure on the President George W. Bush’s administration to take retaliatory action. For the United States, inaction had become politically almost impossible. Responsibility for these attacks was attributed to Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden—a Saudi national who was living in Afghanistan under Taliban protection. Initially, Bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks, but his later statements increasingly portrayed as a retaliatory response to American policies. Regardless of how these statements were interpreted politically, by the end of 2001, it was clear to Washington that Al-Qaeda was the primary enemy and that Afghanistan was the hub of its operations. This context holds particular significance for Pakistan because the Taliban government was harboring Osama bin Laden. Pakistan was not merely a distant spectator to this crisis; it shared a long border with Afghanistan and had spent two decades during the Cold War establishing an extensive political and intelligence network there. Consequently, the United States had no better option than Pakistan. Therefore, the fundamental question is: Did Pakistan truly have the option to simply say “absolutely not,” instead of joining the American war? Pakistan was already grappling with severe economic and diplomatic vulnerabilities during the post-9/11 crisis, as the United States and other Western nations had imposed harsh economic sanctions following the 1998 nuclear tests. These sanctions slowed the pace of development, hampered foreign investment, and strained relations with global financial institutions, leaving the country already burdened by heavy debt. The situation became further complicated when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in October 1999, overthrowing an elected government. The military coup added fuel to the fire, further damaging Pakistan’s global reputation and leaving the country diplomatically weakened at a time when it needed international support the most. Following the September 11 attacks, Washington made its expectations absolutely clear. According to Musharraf’s own account, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage delivered a stern message to Pakistan: it had to stand either with the United States or against it. Another remark widely attributed to the US position was that if Pakistan refused to cooperate, it could be sent “back to the Stone Age.” Although the exact wording of that phrase was never officially substantiated, the intensity of US pressure was undeniable. Did the United States have the capability to inflict devastating damage on Pakistan, despite Pakistan being a nuclear power? The answer to this is “yes.” Pakistan’s nuclear capability was primarily developed to deter India. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal provided Islamabad with a strategic deterrent against its key regional rival, but this did not mean Pakistan was immune to American economic, diplomatic, or technological pressure. Pakistan lacked the long-range military capabilities to directly strike the U.S. mainland—located 7,000 miles away—whereas the United States held an overwhelming advantage in air power, naval strength, intelligence, technology, financial resources, and global diplomatic influence. Therefore, nuclear weapons were not synonymous with strategic parity with the United States. Pakistan could deter certain types of aggression from India, but realistically, it lacked the capability to inflict the same level of damage upon the United States. Another major reason for Pakistan’s importance to the United States was the intelligence network present in Afghanistan. During the Cold War, Pakistan was one of the United States’ key regional partners in supporting the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation. Pakistani intelligence agencies established extensive networks among Afghan groups, while the United States and Saudi Arabia provided arms and financial support for the resistance. Pakistan served as a crucial conduit for channeling this aid to the Afghan resistance. This historical relationship gave the United States a unique strategic advantage after 9/11. Pakistan possessed a combination of geography, intelligence networks, logistical routes, and institutional experience—assets that would have been extremely difficult to replace. Its cooperation could significantly facilitate U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Consequently, Islamabad chose the path it deemed relatively less damaging. Pakistan provided assistance through logistical support, access to airspace and facilities, intelligence cooperation, and other means, but did not directly join the war; in return for this strategic support, US sanctions were eased, economic aid increased, and Pakistan regained special diplomatic significance in Washington. This does not mean that the decision was without negative consequences. Pakistan itself became a major target of terrorism, resulting in the deaths of nearly 70,000 civilian and military personnels and economic losses of approximately $150 billion; Pakistan paid a very heavy price for this war. Furthermore, the repercussions of the strategic policies adopted during the 1980s and 1990s later manifested as problems for Pakistan—issues that perhaps could not have been fully foreseen in 2001. However, there is an important distinction here: criticizing the consequences of a decision and claiming that a different realistic course of action existed at the time are two separate things. A major irony of the Afghan war is that U.S. officials and analysts have repeatedly cited Pakistan as one of the primary reason for the failure to achieve American objectives in Afghanistan. When the question arises as to why the world’s most powerful military failed to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan, the answer is sometimes given in a single word: Pakistan. This should not necessarily be viewed as a badge of honor; rather, it reflects a complex relationship in which Washington needed Pakistan yet lacked trust in it, while simultaneously accusing certain Pakistani elements of supporting forces that were undermining

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

​As Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14, the twentieth-century history of the South Asian subcontinent demands a reflective analysis that goes far beyond a mere anti-colonial struggle or a simplistic narrative of imperial power transition. The creation of Pakistan represents a profound, philosophical, and structural saga centered on collective economic survival, uneven development, and the discovery of a modern political identity. Western Orientalists and traditional nationalist historians of India have often tended to reduce the genesis of Pakistan to emotional religious fervor or the peripheral consequence of a British “divide and rule” strategy. However, when analyzed through the prisms of political economy and structural analysis, a distinct reality emerges: the Muslim demand for a separate homeland was fundamentally a rational, material response to systemic economic marginalization, structural imbalances, and the acute objective fear of becoming a permanent minority under Westminster-style majoritarian democracy. This trajectory unfolded with unbroken intellectual, economic, and constitutional continuity from the post-eighteenth-century decline down to the geopolitical remapping of 14th August 1947. ​To comprehend the evolution of Muslim nationalism in South Asia, a rigorous analysis of the post-1857 economic and structural disruption is indispensable. The collapse of the Mughal state and the consolidation of East India Company rule subjected Muslim society to a catastrophic economic crisis rooted in colonial land and fiscal policies. Through the Permanent Settlement of 1793 in the Muslim-majority region of Bengal, traditional landholding rights were systematically stripped from Muslims and transferred to a newly created non-Muslim landed class. As the historian W. W. Hunter observed in his seminal work, The Indian Musalmans, British administrative interventions pushed the Muslims of Bengal—who had previously constituted the ruling elite and agrarian proprietors—into a condition of severe peasant impoverishment and structural decay. This agricultural dislocation was paralleled by institutional disenfranchisement. The replacement of Persian with English as the official language in 1835 instantly alienated the Muslim intelligentsia and professional classes from the bureaucracy, judiciary, and civil service. In his analysis of the post-colonial state, the political economist Hamza Alavi conceptualized this segment as the “salariat”—a bureaucratic-bourgeois element whose economic dislocation and exclusion from state patronage generated deep structural grievances that ultimately fueled the demand for a distinct national identity. ​As industrial and commercial capitalism took root in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its structure was inherently skewed. India’s emerging indigenous bourgeoisie—comprising Marwari, Gujarati, and Parsi capitalist networks—monopolized banking, insurance, and primary manufacturing. In burgeoning industrial nodes such as Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, Muslims were largely relegated to the ranks of agrarian labor, petty artisans, or urban proletariats. As economic historian Benjamin Zachariah notes, the nature of Indian industrialization created a stark spatial and structural imbalance: Muslim-majority provinces like Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier became agrarian hinterlands relegated to supplying raw materials—such as jute, cotton, and wheat—for external processing. While Bengal produced the vast majority of the world’s raw jute, the processing mills, financial capital, and commercial profits were strictly concentrated in Calcutta under non-Muslim mercantile ownership. This economic asymmetry solidified a growing realization among Muslims that an integrated, highly centralized economy in a united India would permanently trap them in an exploited periphery. ​Against this backdrop of economic and institutional decline, the intellectual trajectory of Muslim nationalism evolved in a deliberate, phased manner. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s Aligarh Movement sought the scientific renaissance and modernizing realignment of Muslim society. As early as the 1880s, Sir Syed critically dissected the mechanics of British parliamentary democracy, arguing that numerical majoritarianism in a multinational, heterogeneous subcontinent would inevitably result in the permanent hegemony of an ethnically and economically dominant majority. By the 1930s, Allama Muhammad Iqbal elevated this political economy argument into a robust philosophical and territorial framework. In his historic 1930 Allahabad Address, Iqbal rejected Western territorial nationalism, asserting that South Asian Muslims constituted a distinct nation in their own right, given their unique socio-legal and cultural matrix. Crucially, Iqbal linked the preservation of Muslim spiritual and cultural identity directly to territorial and economic self-determination in Muslim-majority regions. As political scientist Paul Brass observed through his theoretical lens of instrumentalism, Muslim nationalism in South Asia was not merely an abstract identity movement, but a structured mobilization by an educated, politically conscious elite seeking an equitable distribution of state power and economic resources. ​Translating this intellectual framework into a tangible, international constitutional reality became the historic mission of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Rather than relying on hagiographic narratives, Jinnah’s political evolution must be evaluated through his rigorous legal and constitutional record. As historian Ayesha Jalal demonstrates, Jinnah’s primary objective remained the ironclad safeguarding of the economic, political, and administrative rights of Muslim-majority regions within the subcontinental architecture. For three decades, Jinnah operated as the foremost champion of constitutional guarantees within a united, federal India—evidenced by the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and his Fourteen Points of 1929. However, the centralized ethos of the 1928 Nehru Report, followed by the authoritarian conduct of Congress provincial ministries between 1937 and 1939, forced a decisive paradigm shift in Jinnah’s strategy. The twenty-eight months of Congress rule—marked by educational engineering, discriminatory economic measures, and the marginalization of Muslims in local administrations—proved that paper constitutional guarantees were fragile against an unchecked numerical majority. ​It was from the crucible of this constitutional failure that the Lahore Resolution of 1940 emerged, serving as the definitive blueprint for the creation of Pakistan. Jinnah articulated to the international community that the subcontinental impasse was not a minor minority-majority dispute or a sectarian problem, but an irreconcilable structural conflict between two distinct nations, two differing political economies, and two separate civilizational matrixes. The elections of 1945–46 delivered an overwhelming democratic mandate, confirming that Muslim agrarian masses, merchants, urban laborers, and young professionals unanimously viewed Pakistan as the sole guarantee of their economic emancipation and political sovereignty. Consequently, the Pakistan movement transformed from an elite constitutional debate into a broad-based socio-economic revolution. ​The emergence of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, remains a landmark event in global history, challenging classical theories of post-colonial state formation. It

“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

By Muhammad Imran, Staff Member, SAHSOL-LUMS and Asma Rahmat, Final Year Law Student, SLC, Superior University and Muhammad Ameer Hamza, Final Year Law Student, SLC, Superior University Introduction: Pakistan appears to be entering yet another phase of constitutional uncertainty, engineering, or manipulation, where political developments, institutional pronouncements, and proposals for structural reforms are converging to reshape the national discourse. Recent statements by senior state functionaries have reignited debate over governance, federalism, constitutional amendments, and the future distribution of political power. Whether these developments represent genuine constitutional reform or another episode of constitutional engineering remains an open question. The debate was triggered during an Economic Summit when the Federal Interior Minister, Syed Mohsin Naqvi, observed that the existing “hybrid” governance arrangement had exhausted its utility. While acknowledging the efforts of the Prime Minister, he maintained that the present political system could no longer deliver effective governance and therefore required a comprehensive “reset.” He further warned that, unless structural reforms were undertaken, Pakistan risked witnessing the resurgence of what he described as the CJP as “Cockroach Janta Party”; do not take it as Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP), a political phenomenon which, in his opinion, would be unsustainable. Within twenty-four hours, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director General of ISPR, echoed concerns regarding governance during his media briefing. He emphasized that Parliament bears the constitutional responsibility to devise solutions to persistent governance failures. He further argued that Pakistan’s rapidly expanding population necessitates a serious national debate on the creation of additional provinces to improve administrative efficiency, public service delivery, and democratic accessibility. More significantly, he linked good governance with national security, observing that sustainable counter-terrorism efforts require not only military preparedness but also effective civilian governance and institutional stability. These successive statements have inevitably fuelled speculation regarding another phase of constitutional restructuring. Following the enactment of the person-specific (Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah) Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment, which substantially altered Pakistan’s judicial architecture by establishing the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) and redistributing the constitutional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, political circles have begun discussing the possibility of a Twenty-Eighth Constitutional Amendment. Although no formal proposal has yet emerged, reports suggest that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) remains cautious about any constitutional initiative that may dilute the federal autonomy secured through the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment, particularly the post-NFC fiscal arrangement. Federalism and the NFC Question: Any discussion concerning new provinces inevitably intersects with Pakistan’s fiscal federalism. The Seventh National Finance Commission (NFC) Award and the Eighteenth Amendment fundamentally altered the Federation’s financial architecture by allocating a substantially larger share of federal revenues to the provinces. While these reforms strengthened provincial autonomy, they simultaneously reduced the fiscal capacity of the Federation. Successive federal governments have therefore expressed concern regarding the shrinking financial resources available to discharge expanding national responsibilities. Similar proposals for revisiting the NFC framework surfaced during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government; however, they never materialized because constitutional amendments require a two-thirds parliamentary majority—a threshold that remained politically unattainable. The Politics of New Provinces: The proposal to create additional provinces is hardly novel. For decades, constitutional scholars have argued that Pakistan’s demographic expansion justifies administrative decentralization. Provinces with populations exceeding those of many sovereign states inevitably face governance challenges, administrative inefficiencies, and unequal public service delivery. Yet constitutional necessity has consistently collided with political reality. Pakistan’s two dominant political parties—the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)—have repeatedly expressed conditional support for provincial reorganization while demonstrating limited political willingness to implement it. Their reluctance is attributable not merely to the enormous financial burden of establishing new legislatures, governors’ houses, provincial secretariats, judicial institutions, police organizations, and civil services. More fundamentally, new provinces would inevitably redistribute political influence, electoral constituencies, financial resources, and administrative authority. The current debate vividly illustrates this contradiction. The PPP has argued that provincial reorganization should begin with Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province by population. The PML-N, whose electoral dominance is centred in Punjab, has shown little enthusiasm for initiating such reforms within its own political base. Consequently, critics contend that the resistance to provincial restructuring reflects electoral calculations as much as constitutional considerations. Constitutional Amendments versus Constitutional Governance: Pakistan’s constitutional history demonstrates that amendments have frequently been employed as instruments of political expediency rather than mechanisms of democratic consolidation. Whether enacted by military governments or elected administrations, constitutional amendments have often reflected prevailing political necessities instead of broad constitutional consensus. The central question, therefore, is not whether another constitutional amendment should be enacted, but whether constitutional amendments alone are capable of resolving Pakistan’s chronic governance crisis. Experience suggests otherwise: No constitutional amendment—regardless of its political significance—can compensate for weak institutions, ineffective governance, deficient accountability, or inconsistent adherence to constitutional norms. Constitutional text may reorganize institutions, but it cannot, by itself, transform political culture. The Crisis of Democratic Representation: Pakistan’s more profound constitutional challenge lies elsewhere. A constitutional democracy derives its legitimacy from authentic political representation. Citizens must possess the genuine ability to elect representatives through elections that are free, fair, transparent, and universally trusted. Only under such conditions can Parliament legitimately exercise constituent authority on behalf of the people. Critics of Pakistan’s constitutional evolution have long argued that recurrent political interruptions, institutional interventions, and governance deficits have prevented representative democracy from maturing into a fully autonomous constitutional order. Consequently, civilian supremacy—despite being an essential constitutional aspiration—has often remained institutionally fragile, docile and compliant. Without addressing the quality and credibility of democratic representation, constitutional amendments risk becoming procedural exercises rather than substantive democratic reforms. Institutional Power and Constitutional Accountability: Recent political developments have also revived debate regarding the practical distribution of constitutional authority among state institutions. The Federal Interior Minister’s public assertion that the existing political system had “collapsed,” while continuing to serve in one of the most influential positions within the federal cabinet, generated significant constitutional commentary. Political analysts have interpreted this episode in different ways, but it has undeniably raised broader questions concerning constitutional accountability, institutional autonomy, civilian authority, and the practical operation of Pakistan’s

Since 1949, China has been developing a model of the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics (SMECC). These efforts accelerated after the introduction of the 1978 reforms. President Xi’s rise to leadership of the CPC has added new dimensions and dynamics to the process of creating the SMECC model. President Xi believes that the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics (SMECC) is an integral part of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and a Community with a Shared Future. The SMECC model promotes the market by acknowledging its role in allocating resources and driving market volatility. At the same time, the SMECC model gives due weight to the state’s role. Rather than placing the leading role on the market, it places it on the state and institutions to ensure fair markets, equal opportunities, and fair competition among market participants, so the market functions smoothly. In a nutshell, market forces drive volatility to unlock the full potential of resources and markets; the state protects people’s interests, especially those of marginalized segments of society, the state, and the private sector. However, China believes it cannot build an SMECC model without establishing mutually beneficial economic linkages with other countries. To achieve this goal, China adopted opening up as a core objective of its reforms and has pursued it with sincere dedication since 1978. President Xi refined the concept and introduced the slogan of high-quality opening up, meaning that opening up must benefit people, not only businessmen or the state. He has made high-quality opening up an integral part of the Chinese economy in the New Era. Moreover, President Xi Jinping envisioned that China must open up to play a positive and leading role on the global stage. China adopted a comprehensive policy and plan to ensure high-quality opening up. First, to strengthen opening up, China deemed it necessary to invite the global business community to invest in the Chinese market. Thus, China began engaging foreign investors by expanding the catalog of encouraged industries for foreign investment, including new areas. Over the last decade, the catalog has changed significantly. In 2017, the catalog had 987 items. Of those, 348 were national, and 639 were regional and area-specific. The list has seen a major turnaround since then, and the 2025 catalog has 1678 items. It includes 619 national-level items, and 1060 are region-specific. The major objectives of expanding the catalog are 1) to encourage investment in manufacturing and supply chains, 2) to encourage investment in the Western region, and 3) to integrate the development of services, manufacturing sectors, and investment in the untapped Northern region. In the 2025 catalog, China focuses on: 10) Development and production of nucleic acid pharmaceuticals; 2) R&D and manufacturing of zero‑magnetic medical devices; 3)Smart testing and inspection instruments; 4) High-speed cameras and precision imaging equipment; 5) Intelligent energy management systems and related monitoring devices; 6) Design and production of deep-sea robots and specialized marine equipment; 7) Key technologies for gas-fired power equipment; and 8) R&D and production of core components for industrial robots. Simultaneously, China offers incentives such as tax exemptions on imported equipment, preferential land access, and lower corporate income tax. For example, China has introduced special incentives for investment in the Western region, including a 15% corporate income tax rate if the investor meets certain criteria. The government will also offer a special tax exemption for reinvestment in the country. Industrial land will be provided on a priority basis, and the base price for land transfer has been reduced by up to 70% to support industry setup. Moreover, equipment for self-use will receive a customs duty exemption. Second, President Xi has taken many innovative steps to accelerate and deepen opening up, with the China International Import Expo (CIIE) standing out above all. CIIE is a unique initiative in human history, as no other country has ever launched an import expo. This demonstrates the Chinese leadership’s determination to foster mutually beneficial economic linkages. It counters the liberal economic philosophy, which focuses on maximizing profit without giving due regard to others’ interests. CIIE is changing this traditional concept and trying to present a mutually beneficial model for global trade. Third, the launch of island-wide independent customs operations in the Hainan Free Port is another initiative that demonstrates China’s willingness to create more opportunities for the world. It is a step ahead of previous initiatives and aligns with President Xi’s vision. President Xi believes that amid a wave of protectionism, restrictions, anti-globalization movements, trade wars, and a my-country-first mentality, China must act as a beacon of hope for global economic development and globalization. To do so, China must deepen reforms and create concrete opportunities, not just talk. Therefore, the initiative is not only facilitating trade but also providing space for the global community to explore a new world of opportunities. How? It brings global businesses to Hainan FTP, where they interact to find opportunities not only in China but also in other countries. Data show that 9,600 foreign enterprises operate in Hainan, and investors from 170 countries and regions have invested. Fourth, China is not only inviting investment but also working to bridge the global investment gap. This is another way to create linkages and further open the Chinese market and economy to build the SMECC model. Therefore, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative to create economic opportunities. China has invested almost US$ 1.5 trillion and mobilized more than US$ 3 trillion from other countries and sources. China has also enhanced trade with BRI countries. China also launched the Global Development Initiative to help the world pursue sustainable development. According to data, China has invested more than US$ 23 billion under GDI. Moreover, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to meet countries’ investment needs and bridge the investment gap. In 2025, total investment disbursements exceeded US$ 38 billion. China is also deepening economic openness through its modernization drive. President Xi believes that to achieve modernization objectives, China must be deeply engaged with other economies worldwide. The 15th Five-Year Plan further