General Asim Munir is the army chief. He described Kashmir as Pakistan's "jugular vein". He is considered more powerful and ideologically driven than his predecessor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who handled the 2019 stand-off with India. Pakistan's military doctrine against India follows a "quid pro quo plus" strategy: respond proportionately in nature but hit more targets. Pakistan faces insurgencies in its north and south-west.
Lahore is Pakistan's second-biggest city. Near Muridke, a town 30km north of Lahore, sit the alleged headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a militant group.
Pakistan and India have fought two wars, plus a more limited conflict, over Kashmir since their independence in 1947. Both have nuclear weapons. Pakistan claims all of Jammu & Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region it rules in part. A 1972 agreement freezes the disputed border.
In April 2025, after a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India alleged cross-border involvement from Pakistan. Pakistan's government denied involvement. India suspended a 1960 river-sharing treaty, closed the two countries' only land border crossing, and expelled Pakistan's defence attachés. Pakistan's defence minister, Khawaja Asif, warned of an "imminent" Indian attack. Pakistan's armed forces shot down an Indian spy drone and scrambled jets in response to Indian aerial patrols.
On May 7th 2025 India launched its largest aerial assault on Pakistan in more than 50 years, striking what it called "terrorist infrastructure" at nine sites in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and in Punjab. India said it targeted sites in Muridke and Bahawalpur, among others. Pakistan said India had struck civilian areas, damaging mosques and killing innocents, and called the attack "an act of war". Pakistan claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets. Both sides exchanged artillery fire across the line of control. Pakistan said it shot down 12 Indian drones on May 8th. Khawaja Asif said Pakistan would retaliate against Indian military targets only.
A detailed study by Christopher Clary of the University of Albany for the Stimson Centre found that many or perhaps all of Pakistan's Fatah ballistic missiles fired on May 10th 2025 either missed or were intercepted, judging by the lack of satellite images proving damage. By contrast, India's missile attack that day "appears largely to have overcome Pakistani air defences." Pakistan had nevertheless downed several Indian jets—probably five—on the first day. The chasm between Indian and Pakistani perceptions of the conflict suggests the next showdown could be more dangerous.
Pakistan is the world's second-largest Muslim country. There is still broad public support for Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister (and one-time cricket superstar) who was barred from parliamentary polls in 2024. Asim Munir's popularity surged after the skirmish with India in May 2025. Pakistan's military-backed civilian government now has the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to alter the constitution, after a controversial reallocation of seats. Pakistan has had three prior periods of military rule since independence in 1947. On July 31st 2025 alone, 108 Khan supporters were jailed. Parliamentary polls are due by 2029.
A recurring cycle of violence has emerged along the 2,600km Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ramps up attacks inside Pakistan; Pakistan demands that the Afghan Taliban attack TTP sanctuaries along the border; the Taliban demur; Pakistan's armed forces launch air strikes against TTP targets in Afghanistan; the Taliban retaliate; fighting erupts and subsides—until the next round.
The fiercest round yet came on October 11th 2025, when attacks broke out in at least seven places along the border. Border posts on both sides were overrun. Artillery and small arms were used; Pakistan deployed fighter jets. Pakistan said it killed more than 200 TTP members; over 20 Pakistani soldiers died. The trigger was a TTP attack four days earlier that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel. Pakistan responded with air strikes on Kabul targeting Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of the TTP, whose presence in Afghanistan's capital hints at deepening ties between the TTP and the Taliban.
On October 15th a 48-hour ceasefire was agreed. Khawaja Asif, Pakistan's defence minister, warned that hostilities could resume "at any time". According to the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a Pakistani think-tank, 2025 is on track to be deadlier than 2024, which was the most violent year in a decade.
Much of the October fighting took place in strongholds of the Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan—a faction of the Afghan Taliban with longstanding ties to Pakistan's ISI spy agency. Pakistani officials now accuse the Haqqani network of double-dealing.
On March 16th 2026 a Pakistani airstrike on a site in Kabul killed at least 143 people. The site was the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital—formerly Camp Phoenix, an American base—where more than 2,000 patients, mostly heroin or methamphetamine addicts, were being treated. Pakistan claimed the attack was "precisely targeted" at a terrorist site. Christopher Clary of the University at Albany said the initial evidence suggested there were "very legitimate military targets" close to the hospital but that Pakistan's systems for preventing civilian casualties clearly failed. Pakistan has complete air superiority and backing from America.
The strike was by far the deadliest since the conflict ramped up. On March 18th Pakistan announced a five-day pause in operations, to mark the end of Ramadan.
After a TTP suicide bombing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and retaliatory air strikes, Afghan forces attacked Pakistani troops along the border in late February 2026. Pakistan launched Operation Righteous Fury, bombing military sites and ammunition dumps in Kabul and Kandahar—the latter home to Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban's supreme commander. Pakistan claimed more than 270 Taliban members killed. Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran and the United Nations rushed to counsel restraint.
The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been closed since October 2025. Cross-border trade had already been plummeting: in the first seven months of the fiscal year starting in July, Pakistan's imports from and exports to Afghanistan fell by around four-fifths. Most of the official movement across the border is now one-way: Afghan refugees sent home by Pakistan. Over 2m people have been deported since September 2023; in January 2026 alone, over 77,000 were sent back, according to the UN's refugee agency. Approximately 2m Afghans still remain in Pakistan.
Militant violence in Pakistan is the worst it has been for a decade, increasing every year since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. On February 6th 2026 a suicide bomber killed 32 people and injured at least 170 at a Shia mosque in Islamabad. Pakistan said the "planning, training and indoctrination" for the attack was done in Afghanistan. Responsibility was claimed by Islamic State Pakistan Province. Shehbaz Sharif boasted that Pakistan can "crush any aggressor."
Pakistan sources a fifth of its electricity from hydropower and aims to increase that share. The Indus Water Treaty, a water-sharing deal with India since 1960, was suspended by India in April 2025 following a terrorist attack in Kashmir, though India continued to share flood forecasts. Pakistan's dam-building in its part of Kashmir, increasingly helped by China, serves to reinforce territorial claims and annoy India. Afghanistan revealed plans in late October 2025 to build dams on the Kabul river, further straining relations with Pakistan, which had skirmished on the Afghan border just days before.
Pakistan became the world's second-largest importer of solar panels, almost all of them from China. Between 2022 and 2024 Pakistan's annual imports of Chinese-made solar panels increased almost fivefold to 16 gigawatts; in the first nine months of 2025 it imported another 16GW. By the end of 2025 cumulative solar imports were expected roughly to match the installed generation capacity of the national power system. Solar panels are ubiquitous across the country, from bungalows and mosques to farms and roadside shops; in rural areas they are often mounted on trailers that can be towed between households, and are increasingly included in marriage dowries.
Solar's share of power generation in Pakistan increased from 0.7% in 2019 to 10% in 2024; the country's import bill for LNG for the rest of 2026 is likely to be $6bn less than it otherwise would have been, according to one analysis.
The rooftop solar boom has cut power consumption from the grid by around 12% since 2022, creating a "utility death spiral" in which falling revenues for legacy generators push up bills for remaining users, prompting even more to switch. Four coal-fired plants built and financed by China as part of the Belt and Road Initiative are among the worst-hit. Pakistan imposed a 10% sales tax on imported solar panels in June 2025, to little effect. Awais Leghari, the energy minister, has started negotiations with China on restructuring agreements covering its coal-fired projects and is seeking expertise on grid modernisation. In the first six months of 2025, Pakistan generated 25% of its electricity from solar power. Battery imports are booming; the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis estimates that on current trends battery storage will cover 26% of Pakistan's peak-electricity demand by 2030.
India's GDP is now ten times larger than Pakistan's, having been five times larger in 2000. In 1995 Pakistan's GDP per person was around 45% higher than India's and nearly twice that of Bangladesh's; it is now 45% below India's and 35% below Bangladesh's. Pakistan spends more than half its tax revenue on debt service. Its $138bn of external debt (48% of its total borrowing) is largely split between loans from American-backed multilateral institutions (IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank) and bilateral loans from China, mostly for infrastructure. The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also chipped in, with deferred oil payments and short-term deposits at the central bank. Around half of Pakistanis working abroad are based in the Gulf, mostly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE; their remittances are worth around $40bn a year (10% of GDP).
Scholars of Pakistani foreign policy have coined the term "strategic rents" for the country's ability to extract payments from allies in return for its geopolitical co-operation. Pakistan's outsize intelligence and security apparatus has kept America and others interested. The Hungarian economist Janos Kornai, writing about socialist economies in the old Soviet bloc, argued that state-backed enterprises had no realistic prospect of failure and could limp on for ever. Pakistan's importance in its allies' strategic plans affords it a similar "soft budget constraint": the military men who run much of the economy know that more funding may appear, whether or not they pursue reforms. Liberal economists had hoped the 2026 Gulf crisis might force Pakistan to confront its structural problems, but once again its geopolitical value provided an escape route.
Pakistan is among the countries most exposed to energy shocks: it spends about 4% of GDP on oil and gas imports, sourcing nearly 90% from the Middle East. Remittances from the Gulf are worth around 5-6% of GDP. Foreign-exchange reserves cover less than three months of imports, below the IMF's recommended minimum.
Terrorists operating within Pakistan, including those from Afghanistan, killed 1,612 Pakistanis in 444 attacks in 2024, the worst toll for a decade.
At Western governments' request, Pakistan has stepped up joint efforts to kill and capture leaders of ISKP, which America and other Western governments see as their biggest international terrorist threat. Pakistan arrested the alleged planner of an ISKP suicide attack in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and about 170 civilians in August 2021; it extradited him to America in March 2025, earning rare public praise from Donald Trump. General Michael Kurilla, head of America's Central Command, described Pakistan's counter-terrorism co-operation as "phenomenal" in June 2025.
Pakistan itself is less worried about ISKP, which mainly targets Shia Muslims, Westerners and Russians. It is far more concerned about the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), active in its northern tribal areas, and separatist groups in the south-western province of Balochistan. Pakistan wants America to provide more intelligence, resume supplying weaponry (such as mine-resistant armoured personnel carriers and night-vision goggles) and accept its claims that India is backing the TTP and Baloch separatists. American officials may be open to supplying equipment they believe would not alter the military balance with India, but provision of any such kit would be fiercely opposed by India's government.
Pakistan also wants America to work to recover the vast quantities of weapons it left behind in Afghanistan after withdrawing in 2021. Despite co-operation against ISKP, mutual distrust remains the only constant in the Pakistan-America security relationship. Some Western officials suggest Pakistan has hyped up the importance of some ISKP figures it has killed or captured. Some Pakistani officials suggest ISKP is covertly backed by America.
Pakistan imports 81% of its arms from China, up from 38% just 15 years ago. China has provided weapons for decades and is now Pakistan's biggest supplier. Turkey has also become an important partner, particularly as a supplier of drones. Pakistan's air force has some American F-16s. Pakistan has added 150 JF-17 fighters, most jointly made with China, since 2007 and has bought 20 J-10C fighters since 2022. China does not use the smaller, older JF-17 but operates J-10Cs itself, including around Taiwan.
During the May 2025 fighting with India, Pakistan claims its Chinese J-10C fighters and their PL-15 air-to-air missiles shot down five Indian fighters, including three French Rafales and two older Russian models, in a dogfight of more than an hour involving 114 aircraft conducted entirely beyond visual range. If confirmed, this would be the first combat loss of a Rafale. China's modern fighters had previously been untested in combat and thought inferior to Western equivalents. India disputes Pakistan's claim of six shoot-downs. Foreign military officials believe five Indian aircraft were destroyed, including at least one Rafale. Indian military officers, while refusing to confirm numbers, have started to admit losses—and to indicate that the losses may have stemmed from Indian errors rather than technological deficiencies.
China Space News, a state-run Chinese defence publication, reported on May 12th 2025 that Pakistan had used a new system in which air defences locked on to targets, with fighters then firing missiles from afar guided by other aircraft.
One theory among foreign officials is that India did not mount its Rafales with Meteor long-range air-to-air missiles on the first day; another is that India's fighters lacked the right electronic jamming equipment, up-to-date software or relevant data to protect them from Pakistan's new weaponry. A third explanation is that India lacked the "mission data" to understand how Pakistan could identify Indian plans, pass data to its own jets and guide missiles to targets. Since the conflict, Chinese diplomats have been badmouthing Rafales to other prospective buyers and urging them to buy Chinese fighters instead.
On May 10th 2025 Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Pakistan thanked America and other mediators and welcomed a proposal for broader talks covering the status of Indian-ruled Kashmir, India's suspension of the river-sharing treaty, and Pakistan's allegations that India backs insurgencies on Pakistani soil. Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, said Pakistan agreed to the ceasefire "in the spirit of peace" but would not tolerate violations of its sovereignty. After both sides accused each other of violations on May 11th, military operations chiefs spoke on a hotline and agreed to consider measures to reduce troop numbers in border and forward areas.
America has had less interest and influence in Pakistan since its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Following the wind-down of the war on terror and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, Western leaders pay less attention to Pakistan. Once Western presidents and prime ministers had to indulge, humour, bribe and threaten Pakistan in order to ensure its half-co-operation; now they more often ignore it.
America's close ties to Pakistan deteriorated after American forces killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout in 2011. America then lost interest after leaving Afghanistan a decade later. But to India's dismay, America and Pakistan are rebuilding ties with a focus on trade and investment, counter-terrorism and consultation on Middle Eastern policy. America may even sell arms again to Pakistan. In late July 2025, Trump hailed a new trade deal with Pakistan while branding India a "dead economy" and imposing tariffs of 50%.
In June Asim Munir was hosted at the White House. The commander of America's Central Command described Pakistan as a "phenomenal" counter-terrorism partner, citing its operations against ISIS-Khorasan. S. Paul Kapur, the nominee for the State Department's top South Asia post, told the Senate his approach would be to "pursue security co-operation" while seeking trade and investment opportunities. Pakistan has cultivated ties with Trump family members, partly by presenting itself as a cryptocurrency hub.
Pakistan now looks more to China, with which it has had close defence and economic ties for decades. Pakistan has a $7bn IMF bail-out programme.
Pakistan has approximately 170 nuclear warheads. On September 17th 2025 Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual-defence pact declaring that "any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both." Khawaja Mohammad Asif, the defence minister, said Pakistan's nuclear capabilities "will be made available…according to this agreement", though he later suggested nuclear weapons were "not on the radar". Saudi officials called it a "comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means." If nuclear deterrence is indeed extended, it would be the first time a nuclear-armed state outside the five powers recognised by the NPT has offered another country a nuclear umbrella.
The pact builds on decades of co-operation. In the 1960s Pakistani troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen; around 2,000 troops are thought to remain today. In 1998, when India tested nuclear weapons, the Saudis offered Pakistan more than 50,000 barrels per day of free oil to help it match those tests while weathering sanctions. In 1999 Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, then Saudi defence minister, visited the sites where Pakistan enriched uranium and assembled its missiles. A.Q. Khan, a leading Pakistani nuclear scientist, briefed Prince Sultan on that trip; Western intelligence agencies long suspected he might sell weapons technology to hostile states. In his history of the Pakistani bomb, "Eating Grass" (2012), Feroz Hassan Khan, a former Pakistani nuclear official, acknowledged Saudi "generous financial support" but denied nuclear-related co-operation.
The deal was likely accelerated by Israel's September 9th air strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha, and by Iran's earlier missiles at an American air base there. For Pakistan, the pact could bring Saudi cash months after a $7bn IMF bail-out. On September 21st the central bank cut its growth forecast for the next fiscal year, partly because of unprecedented flooding that displaced 2.5m people and wiped out food harvests. Ishaq Dar, the foreign minister, hinted that "some other countries want to enter into an agreement of this nature."
The Reko Diq mine in Balochistan province may be one of the world's largest untapped reserves of copper and gold, minerals critical for the energy transition. Once operational, it is estimated to generate about $150bn in revenue over four decades. Since 1993 various international companies have tried to make the mine work; financial, legal and political concerns stopped them.
Barrick, a Canadian mining company, is now in a consortium with three Pakistani state-owned enterprises and the Balochistan provincial government, and is due to break ground in 2025, with production expected in 2028. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have approved financing. America's development-finance institutions are mulling one-off loans of up to $1bn. There appears to be an implicit agreement between Pakistan, Barrick and their prospective lenders to keep the mine beyond Chinese influence: the plan is to ship concentrates via a port near Karachi, not the nearby Chinese-built Gwadar port. But the 1,330km rail journey to Karachi runs on track in dreadful condition. China had promised $7bn to upgrade the railway but has quietly pulled back; Pakistan's government approved a $390m financing package, without specifying where the money will come from. The Asian Development Bank is in advanced talks for a $2bn loan to the government. Unofficial plans for a new port costing $1.2bn next to Gwadar, with some American financial support, have also surfaced.
In late September 2025 Shehbaz Sharif and Asim Munir met Donald Trump in the Oval Office; Munir showed a casket of mineral samples to the president. The mine sits close to Afghanistan and Iran, and could be disrupted by Baloch separatist terrorism. The Institute of Economics & Peace, an Australian think-tank, ranks Pakistan the second country in the world most afflicted by terrorism, after Burkina Faso.
Pakistan's cricket board is run by the country's interior minister. Like all teams except England and Australia, Pakistan's cricket team survives on cash from the ICC (the sport's global governing body, now run by Jay Shah, son of India's home minister Amit Shah). During the 2026 men's T20 World Cup, hosted in India, Pakistan's government banned its team from playing a fixture against India, citing solidarity with Bangladesh after Bangladesh was excluded from the tournament. The move calculated that sporting and financial losses were worth the rare pleasure of upsetting India's establishment—matches between the two countries are the most watched in any cricket tournament. After ten days of backchannel negotiations, Pakistan relented.
Ishaq Dar is the foreign minister. In June 2025 he denied that Pakistan would carry out a nuclear strike on Israel if it attacked Iran with atomic weapons. Pakistan has offered Iran diplomatic support and condemned Israel's attacks on it.
Pakistan has represented Iran's interests in Washington for almost 50 years; Iran has had no embassy in America. Only two years before the 2026 Gulf war, Iran and Pakistan themselves exchanged missile strikes, each attacking militant insurgent groups sheltering across the border. After that conflict Asim Munir opened communications with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and Shehbaz Sharif received then-president Ebrahim Raisi in Islamabad. After America and Israel bombed Iran in June 2025, Pakistan was outspoken in its support.
Big cities are experiencing gas shortages and rolling blackouts. Soaring fuel prices since the 2026 Gulf war began have so far been met with muted protest, but only because the regime has warned opposition parties not to demonstrate. Food prices are likely to rise in the coming months. Asim Munir's plan for improving the economy largely involves extending military control over it.
Pakistan already has around 13,000 soldiers and 18 jets stationed in Saudi Arabia. There is growing talk of creating an "Islamic NATO"—involving Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and perhaps others—to boost co-operation on defence and security. Pakistan's defence spending increased by around a fifth in 2026.
Pakistan emerged as the key mediator in the 2026 Iran-America conflict. Iran deemed other potential intermediaries—Turkey, Egypt—too close to Washington; Pakistan became Trump's favoured choice. The army chief, Munir, led the effort, speaking with Trump and J.D. Vance "through the night", with Iran contacts co-ordinated by Pakistan's intelligence service. Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, credited the truce to the "tireless efforts" of Sharif and Munir. On April 8th 2026 Trump agreed to a two-week ceasefire, with face-to-face talks between the two sides set for April 11th in Islamabad—Iran's delegation to be led by parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, America's by Vance. Pakistan had deepened ties with Trump's inner circle by positioning itself as a hub for cryptocurrency and critical minerals, and had nominated Trump for the Nobel peace prize after the India-Pakistan ceasefire.
The mediation came at a cost: angered by Pakistan's engagement with Iran, the UAE decided on April 4th 2026 not to roll over a $3.5bn loan. Pakistan has a keen self-interest in ending the war—it is one of the countries most exposed to higher energy prices, and a long conflict would endanger its economic recovery. Pakistan has secured IMF loans a world-record 25 times.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.