AFGHANISTAN

A clear indictment

Editorial 

Published December 19, 2025 

DAWN

YET again, the UN Security Council’s monitoring report on Afghanistan has painted a grim picture of the presence of transnational terrorist groups on Afghan territory. The report, a regular feature, reiterates that Afghanistan remains a staging ground for some of the most lethal terrorist outfits in the world. Pakistan, which has been a victim of the TTP, based in Afghanistan, has known this painful reality for years.

The report notes that over 20 international and regional terrorist organisations currently call Afghanistan home. These include IS-K, Al Qaeda, the TTP and ETIM, among others.

With the exception of IS-K, these groups have good relations with the Afghan Taliban. Importantly, the report says that the Taliban’s claims that no militant groups are based on their soil are “not credible”.


For Pakistan, the TTP — largely due to the permissive environment it enjoys under Afghan Taliban rule — poses a major security challenge. The UN document says that the terrorist group has conducted over 600 attacks against this country in the current year.

Moreover, TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud is believed to spend time in Kabul, while other anti-Pakistan terrorists, such as Gul Bahadur, are also based in Afghanistan.

The report highlights links between the TTP and Al Qaeda, as well as ETIM. Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, said to be a front for TTP and Al Qaeda fighters, is amongst the other terrorist groups active next door. Meanwhile, another matter of grave concern is the presence of madressahs run by IS-K near the Pakistani border.

The details mentioned in the UN report shatter any illusion that Taliban-run Afghanistan poses no threat to its neighbours. On the contrary, just as it used to be before the US-led invasion, Afghanistan has become a safe haven for extremely dangerous and violent militant outfits that threaten the region and the world.

And while the report says that there are differences within the upper echelons of the Taliban leadership on how to deal with the TTP, Kabul’s rulers are unlikely to take action against the group, as the regime may actually “lack the ability to do so”.

This should be a matter of great concern for the international community, particularly Afghanistan’s neighbours. Nearly all states bordering Afghanistan have experienced terrorist attacks carried out by groups based on Afghan soil, with Pakistan the hardest hit.

The way forward does not seem to be clear-cut. More conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan will not solve the problem in the long run. Talks with the Kabul regime have also failed to provide meaningful outcomes.

In such a situation, perhaps the least bad option is to reach out to the relatively ‘moderate’ elements within the Taliban set-up, and press upon them the need to stop terrorists from threatening Afghanistan’s neighbours.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2025

CLIMATE CRISIS

PAKISTAN

Authoritative advisory opinion

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh

Published December 18, 2025  

DAWN

The writer is a climate change and sustainable development expert.

ALTHOUGH the International Court of Justice’s July 2025 advisory opinion on climate change was a watershed moment in climate action, it received limited attention from Pakistan’s legal and climate communities. This landmark decision by the ICJ’s 15 judges authoritatively clarifies states’ legal responsibilities, establishing the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature threshold as the binding global benchmark. COP30 in Belém has since acknowledged growing risks of overshoot.

The court’s opinion imposes on every state a binding obligation to demonstrate its “highest possible ambition” in climate action. This requires aligning Nationally Determined Contributions and regulatory frameworks with the scientifically determined target. Significantly, the court’s analysis extends state responsibility to the full lifecycle of fossil fuels: production, licensing, subsidies, and downstream indirect emissions across the value chain. The opinion confirms that IPCC assessments constitute “the best available science”, rendering fossil fuel subsidies potentially wrongful when foreseeably incompatible with temperature limits.

The ICJ’s reasoning unfolds through five foundational principles:

Precautionary approach: Scientific uncertainty cannot justify inaction. The court emphasises that IPCC warnings mandate immediate protective steps, even as 1.5°C proves unsafe for vulnerable populations of countries like Pakistan at current 1.2°C warming.


Duty to prevent significant harm: Under customary international law, states must exercise due diligence to prevent transboundary environmental damage, extending to all anthropogenic GHG contributions from production through consumption.


Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC): Burdens must align with historical emissions, current capacities, and evolving circumstances. The Paris Agreement’s “different national circumstances” formulation upholds, rather than weakens this core principle.


Intergenerational equity: Present generations hold climate stability in trust for future ones. The court rejects infrastructure decisions creating emissions lock-in that imperil subsequent generations’ rights to dignified living conditions.


Duty to cooperate: A legally binding obligation requires states to collaborate on mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology transfer, with higher-capacity states bearing primary responsibility towards vulnerable ones.

The court rejected arguments by developed countries that specialised climate treaties supersede other international obligations, confirming these principles integrate across UN Charter obligations, human rights law, and environmental treaties. This means the developed countries cannot use the Paris Agreement’s ambiguous language to shield themselves from broader legal accountability.


Pakistan’s superior judiciary operationalised ICJ’s recent climate principles much earlier.

While unanimous on core 1.5°C obligations as a state responsibility, individual judges articulated nuanced approaches. Judge Nolte advocated cautious interpretation, prioritising close adherence to treaty texts. Judge Xue highlighted challenges in linking past emissions to present harms, calling for steady progress through careful monitoring while treating 1.5°C as a practical guide. Judge Yusuf stressed that new fossil fuel projects constitute risks under due diligence standards, demanding clear national plans over procedural delays.


Judges Aurescu, Bhandari, and Tladi linked human rights and harm prevention to accelerated emissions cuts by major emitters, grounding these in equity principles and compensation duties. In their statement, Judges Bhandari and Cleveland required accounting for full emissions chains from production to use, calling new fossil fuel exploration incompatible with 1.5°C limits.

Pakistan’s superior judiciary operationalised these ICJ principles years earlier. In ‘Shehla Zia vs Wapda’ (1994), the Supreme Court established that scientific uncertainty mandated precautionary protection. ‘D.G. Khan Cement vs Government of Punjab’ (2021) prohibited industrial expansion in ecologically fragile zones, embodying ‘duty to prevent significant harm’ while recognising intergenerational justice and environmental personhood.

Most significantly, ‘Asghar Leghari vs Federation of Pakistan’ (2015) saw Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah recognise Pakistan’s limited historical emissions while mandating action commensurate with national capacity, explicitly invoking CBDR-RC. Justice Shah affirmed future generations’ constitutional rights to climate stability. The Climate Change Commission, where I served under Dr Parvez Hassan, operationalised the ‘duty to cooperate’ through multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Justice Athar Minallah’s Islamabad Zoo case reinforced that governmental neglect causing environmental degradation violates fundamental duties. These precedents position Pakistan’s judiciary among global leaders in climate jurisprudence, presenting a compelling case for Pakistan to recognise its recently ‘retired’ judges by nominating them for ICJ positions in 2027, when a third of the court’s members retire.

The diverse judicial perspectives in the ICJ offer Pakistan multiple pathways rather than binary choices. Pakistan can pursue enhanced environmental standards and climate risk assessments that satisfy core obligations, while evidence-based sectoral transitions can target RE expansion and incremental scaling. Controlled fossil fuel reductions synchronised with global roadmaps can balance climate ambition with economic stability.

Pakistan faces significant implementation challenges. Its political economy, fiscal constraints, institutional capacity gaps, and reliance on fossil fuel projects create tensions with climate commitments. The advisory opinion’s non-binding nature means enforcement depends on political will and diplomatic pressure. However, our unique position as both climate-vulnerable and jurisprudentially advanced creates an opportunity where Pakistan can leverage its superior court precedents to demonstrate that 1.5°C-aligned governance is legally feasible and constitutionally mandated. By formally recognising the judiciary’s pre-emptive alignment with ICJ principles, Pakistan positions its jurisprudence as a global contribution worthy of replication.

Coordinated action is needed across multiple fronts. Pakistan must deliver climate justice to its people by grounding its position in pioneering judicial precedents alongside the ICJ opinion, establishing that developed countries’ obligations to provide financial and technological help stem from binding legal principles, not voluntary solidarity.

By honouring their judiciary’s legacy while embracing the ICJ’s guidance, Pakistani negotiators can champion the 1.5°C imperative as a moral necessity and legal obligation. The deeper challenge ahead, however, is delivering justice to front-line communities while advancing climate accountability.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2025

Reading nature

Amin Valliani 

Published December 19, 2025 

DAWN

A FAMILY lost its buffalo during the floods earlier this year when the major rivers were overflowing. The buffalo was the family’s sole economic asset. At this moment of sadness, someone came to sympathise with the family, but the head of the household said it would have been better had he died instead, as then the family would mourn for a few days but life would then go on. However, the loss of the buffalo, he said, made his family not only mourn but also starve.

There are thousands of such stories, de­­scribing the plight of affected people who have been left penniless due to the disaster. Many families, already living hand-to-mouth, are now destitute and traumatised.

Pakistan is a resource-rich country, but around 40 per cent of its population lives below the poverty line. Every year we experience floods, storms, droughts, earthquakes and other calamities which increase poverty levels. The government is unable to control these calamities and cannot deal with their aftermath. Natural calamities occur due to inherent natural processes and forces.

External factors, such as climate change, intensify these events. While the underlying forces are natural, human activities can influence the frequency and severity of these occurrences, blurring the lines between natural hazards and human-induced disasters.


Solutions are needed on a self-help basis.

We must remember that Islam is the religion of ‘nature’, it emphasises understanding nature. The Holy Quran also says that “Allah burdens not a person beyond his scope …” (2:286). Such types of catastrophes remind us of Islam’s teaching that Allah tests His creation to make them resilient and create fortitude in their hearts and minds. Our life is made up of problems, they occur every day and it is nature’s way of testing and imparting lessons to human beings till one learns the meaning, and discovers the purpose, of life.

Normally, we receive advance signals and warnings, informing the community of impending disaster. It is necessary that advance preparations are made to deal with such situations. The challenge before Pakistan is not only to respond to disasters after they occur, but more importantly, to strengthen preparedness and resilience before they strike.

It is said that Pakistan’s contribution to climate change is negligible, but it is included in the list of the most affected countries of the world. Some circles have urged the government to make a global appeal for aid, but normally, the international community offers only sympathy on such occasions. For example, we have seen that in January 2023, Pakistan organised a conference in Geneva with the UN’s help, aimed at securing international support for its post-flood recovery and financial commitments for climate resilience after the devastating 2022 floods. Different states and institutions made commitments, but the majority of the pledges failed to materialise.

Pakistan needs to rely on no one, and seek solutions on a self-help basis without recourse to others. The finance minister also declared that Pakistan would not seek international aid after the 2025 floods. This is a good decision which enhances the nation’s self-respect.

Moreover, Pakistan needs to benefit from the experiences of those who have created the capability for climate resilience. There are countries which have solved the problems posed by natural calamities by developing solutions of their own, such as rain-harvesting systems, collecting rainwater during rainy days and subsequently using it in months of water scarcity.

Here the example of Singapore would be helpful. Singapore has largely solved its problem of wa­­ter scarcity. It currently imports wa­­t­er from neigh­bou-

ring Malaysia but has also adopted the Four National Taps Strategy and has planned to become fully self-sufficient by 2061 when its agreement with Malaysia ends.

It has developed a comprehensive network of drains, canals, and rivers, collects rainwater and channels it into 17 reservoirs across the country. This system also manages storm water to prevent flooding. Singapore collects and treats its used water to a high standard, producing safe and high-quality reclaimed water known as ‘NEWater’.

Singapore also removes salt from seawater through advanced desalination plants to produce fresh water. This technology has seen significant advancements and contributes a substantial portion of the country’s water supply. Singapore has heavily invest­­ed in developing and advancing water technologies, particularly in desalination and water reclamation.

This diversified and technological approach has made Singapore a global leader in water management and a model for other nations facing water scarcity challenges. It could help to learn from such examples.

The writer is an educationist with an interest in religion.
valianiamin@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2025

Watering hope and hype

Khurram Husain 

Published December 18, 2025

DAWN

A BRIEF but telling moment passed quickly without comment in the press conference by the DG ISPR on Dec 5. It came in response to a question in which he was asked a vague and rambling question about how the “national media” amplifies the remarks and narratives that the DG had spent the entire press conference denouncing as fake and against the interests of Pakistan.

The DG started off by saying that the big problem with the “national media” is that they want to discuss nothing but “politics and rhetoric”. He exhorted them to talk about “actual issues” inst­e­­ad and went on to furnish a few examples. He said the country’s population is 250 million, and it’s growing by 4m every year, saying that we’re adding a small country’s worth of population every year.

“That requires a lot of resources,” he said, referring to the mouths that need feeding. He pointed to the recent rains and ensuing floods, pointed out the huge losses they caused, then added that, according to one estimate, 25 to 30 million acre feet of water was drained into the sea within three months. “One MAF is equal to $1 billion of agriculture product,” he carried on. “So you poured 25 to 30 billion dollars’ worth of water” into the sea.

Then he mentioned the water storage capacity of the country, at 13 to 14 MAF, and underlined that next year there will be even more rains, then let the thought trail off by saying the media should be talking about “storage and its canals”.


Rarely, if ever, does one see an actual substantive issue being given actual substantive treatment on prime time television.

“Our population is increasing, we need food security for them, we need to increase cultivable land, we need to, for the sake of the economy, properly exploit our mineral resources,” he said, as he urged the media to talk about these (and other) things, “and tell us this is the proper way to do it”. He concluded by telling the questioner that there are not “dozens, but hundreds of issues” to talk about, but the media seems to have made up its mind to keep its focus on “he says, she says” and what people are saying to each other rather than concentrating on the actual problems plaguing the country.


So let’s start by acknowledging that the DG is absolutely correct in pointing out that Pakistan’s public conversation is heavily saturated with the “he says, she says” of politics. Rarely, if ever, does one see an actual substantive issue being given actual substantive treatment on prime time television or any actual investigative work in print publications. Journalists rarely make the effort to ask whether a claim that is being made is true or not. They simply report what somebody said and leave it at that.

One result is that inaccurate claims gain widespread circulation and journalists, of all people, don’t ask simple questions, like ‘is this true?’ More than anything else, it is the economy that suffers because wild claims presenting quick fixes, or elaborate cons disguised as ‘innovation’ enter the policy conversation, are backed by dodgy numbers and data, get reported in the media as if they were factual, and perceptions grow around them that somehow a magical fix of all our economic problems can be had if only we can do this one thing, whatever it may be.

Take the example cited by the DG himself, the claim that 1 MAF of water equals $1bn of agriculture output, which he apparently supposes to mean that $25 to $30bn worth of water is being drained into the sea every year. On this supposition he builds the understanding that if we could only harness this water, using dams and canals, we could recover all this value and ensure our food security, and presumably also shore up our external account weakness, since he gives the value of the water in dollars.


But does 1 MAF of water really equal $1bn of output? The last mention this claim finds is when the Punjab member of the Indus River System Authority — Rao Irshad Ali Khan — told a Senate committee that “we and our coming generations would die of hunger if we do not build dams” and used this figure to buttress his case back in 2020. But if you look carefully, you will notice something.

It seems a crude calculation was performed to derive this figure. They seem to have taken the GDP contribution of agriculture, forestry and fisheries for FY2019, as reported by the State Bank, converted that amount to dollars at average exchange rate for that fiscal year, then divided that figure with the total availability of surface water in FY2019. If you do this, you get a figure close to $1bn per MAF.

But there are problems here. The first and biggest problem is an underlying assumption that is faulty. If it takes roughly 1 MAF of water to produce $1bn worth of agriculture output today, does that mean we can secure another $1bn worth of agriculture output with every incremental 1 MAF of water? The answer is no, it doesn’t work like that. The costs of building all the infrastructure required to arrange that incremental 1 MAF of water will have to be deducted from the present value of the anticipated future cash flows of any agricultural output that will result from the storage. Once you do this, you will notice that any increase in cultivable land brought about by building more water storage capacity does not break even for at least a decade if not longer.

Space prevents a more detailed examination and rebuttal of the Punjab member’s claims. But suffice it to say that it is a defective idea to build a vision for national renewal out of assumptions built on the claim that 1 MAF of water can add $1bn to our economic output. The lack of focus on substantive issues in our national conversation is what gives currency to such dubious numbers. It is a good idea to take them with a heavy dose of scepticism.

The writer is a business and economy journalist.
khurram.husain@gmail.com
X: @khurramhusain

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2025

Islamabad the ugly

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar 

Published December 19, 2025

DAWN

IT is a truism that Pakistan is an extremely class-divided society. From the proverbial village to the metropolitan city, the brutal reality of an anti-poor system stares us in the face, assuming we choose to open our eyes and look.

In late November, the Capital Develop­ment Authority (CDA) initiated a mass eviction in a sprawling katchi abadi sandwiched between the Bari Imam shrine and the President’s House. The abadi, known as Muslim Colony, has existed for at least five decades, and by conservative estimates was home to 20,000 working people, making it arguably the largest informal settlement in Islamabad.

Muslim Colony’s first-generation residents literally built Islamabad with their own hands, including the grand buildings on Constitution Avenue that overlooked their shanties. Over the years, a significant number of Muslim Colony residents became the drivers, gardeners, cooks and cleaners that sustain the ruling classes’ offices and homes.

As construction workers and service providers, katchi abadi dwellers are never ‘security risks’ — in fact it is their labour which explains the palatial lifestyles of Islamabad and Rawalpindi elites. But when push came to shove, the CDA and what seemed like most of Islamabad’s police force forcibly dispossessed Muslim Colony residents of their homes. Anyone who dared peacefully resist faced violent arrest and harassment.

And the courts? The evictees were principally protected by at least two stay orders, one issued by the Supreme Court in 2015 after another mass eviction of a katchi abadi in sector I-11 of the capital, and another more recent one issued by the Islamabad High Court after Muslim Colony residents approached it.

The eviction crews, led by highly educated CDA officers, treated the court orders as mere pieces of paper worth less than the cost of their printing. Perhaps we should not be surprised at the contempt of the bureaucratic apparatuses of the state for even the little relief provided by the superior courts to the working poor in this country — after all, ex-military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf once boasted that the Constitution is merely a piece of paper that can be ripped up and tossed into the proverbial dustbin.


Katchi abadi dwellers are never ‘security risks’.

Katchi abadis and their violent dispossession expose one of the most long-standing myths in Pakistan. They say ‘Islamabad the beautiful’ is the most liveable city in Pakistan, a planned metropolis of world-class standard. To begin with, the CDA and successive militarised hybrid regimes that back it have turned Islamabad into a concrete jungle, allowing all sorts of commercial activities in the Margalla hills while fronting relentless construction of big thoroughfares and plazas to serve the suburban rich. All this has made the city even less liveable for the mass of its working people alongside students who in-migrate to acquire an education.

Renting a home, let alone buying one, is virtually impossible for a working-class household in Islamabad. The city’s real estate was already more expensive than Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar or Quetta even before post-2000 heralded a great new land grab by property speculators and real estate developers. Apparently, all of this was and continues to be facilitated by the CDA, which has wilfully made a mockery of the 1960 Master Plan, occasionally making changes in zoning by-laws to provide post-facto cover to all sorts of profit-making abominations.

Meanwhile, katchi abadis have continued to proliferate because the working masses do, after all, need shelter. There are now approximately 50 settlements in Islamabad with a total population of more than 500,000. Another one of the my­­ths that has been peddled by the CDA and others of its ilk — who want the labour of working people but refuse to acknowledge their basic needs — is that katchi abadi dwellers are free riders and land grabbers who are essentially har­ming the public good. This, quite simply, is a lie.

Katchi abadis come into being through fully-functioning informal housing markets in which cash exchanges hands between the users of land (katchi abadi residents), the administrators of land (government functionaries) and informal middlemen. The government functionaries are at the apex of this arrangement because they pocket a ‘monthly rent’ while always retaining the power to arbitrarily pull the plug and bulldoze the settlement.

This is what happened in Muslim Colony as it has happened in many other katchi abadis. And given the complete impunity of those who perpetrate so-called ‘anti-encroachment operations’, they will not stop. But working people will not be swallowed up by the ground either. It is they who make Islamabad what it is. Without them, it is but an ugly reflection of the larger class war waged by this country’s rapacious and shameless elite.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2025

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

ANY EXCUSE WILL DO

US Homeland Security chief pauses green card lottery programme, says it was used by Brown University shooting suspect

AFP | Reuters | News Desk 

Published December 19, 2025 

US Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem ordered the suspension of the diversity visa lottery progamme on Thursday after saying it was used by the suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University.

“The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa programme (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card,” Noem wrote on social media.

Secretary Kristi Noem

@Sec_Noem

The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country.  In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.  At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.

9:31 PM · Dec 18, 2025

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2.7M

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“At president Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the DV1 programme to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous programme,“ she said.

According to the Associated Press, the diversity visa programme makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the US, many of them in Africa.

The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges, AP reported.

Officials said earlier that the suspect was dead as investigators said he also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days after the rampage at Brown.

He had been a PhD student in physics who was familiar with the building where the shooting took place, officials said.

Providence police Chief Oscar Perez and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, speaking at a Thursday night press conference, said that Valente took his own life and investigators believe he acted alone.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF AMERIKA, NOW!

Secretary Kristi Noem

@Sec_Noem

Tonight, I’m announcing a nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country NOW or face deportation with the inability to return to the US. This serves as a strong warning to criminal illegal aliens to not come to America. If they do, they will be hunted down and deported. Thank you

@realdonaldtrump

for securing our border and putting America first.

6:44 PM · Feb 17, 2025

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