Uzair Younus is a Principal at The Asia Group, where he advises global companies on developing and executing strategies to align their business strategy with public good needs across South Asia. He is also host of the podcast Pakistonomy.
After years of strategic drift, 2025 has placed Pakistan in a rare sweet spot where its allies and partners see it as a country that offers them things they value and need.
If pursued with clarity, the SMDA could be remembered not just as a security commitment, but as the moment Islamabad and Riyadh truly began to reshape their economies together through integration.
Washington’s chainsaw to the old order may look terrifying from the outside, but if Pakistan uses this as the impetus to unleash its own process of creative destruction, the country can find its footing in a rapidly changing global landscape.
At a time when the party was bleeding support in core constituencies and states, Harris is likely to inject new energy as the first Black woman to possibly become president.
It is almost as if the government and its representatives want the party to go on for themselves by extracting more from compliant citizens and businesses and borrowing from future generations of Pakistanis.
Arbitrary internet shutdowns are a self-inflicted wound on Pakistan's technology sector, undermining the country's potential to become a hub for digital innovation.
There can be no doubt about the fact that parliamentary democracy in Pakistan will take years to recover from the devastation inflicted upon it in the last five years.
So long as political elites are engaged in conflict with one another and actively seeking to pull the military to their own side, security sector reforms will never be possible.
If Pakistan’s elites are unwilling to sacrifice their ego, ideology, and wealth during a once-in-a-generation crisis, they deserve the reckoning that is surely coming their way.
