Pakistan Is Not Stable. It Is Unraveling.
A nuclear-armed country is being consumed by insurgency, military domination, political repression, economic despair and the consequences of its own support for extremism
For decades, Western governments have treated Pakistan as a difficult but fundamentally stable state, a nuclear-armed country held together by a powerful military, foreign assistance and the strategic interests of the United States, China and the Gulf states.
That assumption is becoming dangerously detached from reality.
Pakistan is no longer confronting one isolated crisis. It is confronting multiple crises simultaneously: a rapidly intensifying insurgency in Balochistan, rising anger in Sindh, Taliban violence, conflict with Afghanistan, political repression, enforced disappearances, religious persecution, unemployment, water insecurity and the expanding domination of the economy by the military establishment.
Pakistan is not stable.
It is unraveling.
Balochistan has moved beyond ordinary unrest
Balochistan is experiencing what increasingly resembles a full-scale rebellion.
In July 2026, Pakistan’s military reported that 42 police officers and soldiers had been killed in three major attacks within a matter of days. Earlier in the year, coordinated assaults brought parts of the province to a virtual standstill, targeting security installations and government infrastructure across multiple locations.
This is no longer a small collection of militants hiding in remote mountains. Baloch insurgent organizations have demonstrated greater coordination, improved weaponry and the ability to strike cities, transportation systems and heavily protected security targets.
The insurgents have also committed indefensible attacks against civilians. No legitimate demand for political rights can justify terrorism or the murder of innocent people.
But military force alone will not resolve the conflict.
Balochistan is rich in natural gas, minerals and strategic resources, yet it remains Pakistan’s largest and poorest province. Generations of Baloch citizens believe their resources have been extracted while their communities have remained impoverished, militarized and politically marginalized.
Instead of confronting those grievances, the state continues to arrest, disappear and prosecute people who expose them.
Dr. Mahrang Baloch became one of the most internationally recognized voices against enforced disappearances, alleged extrajudicial killings and economic injustice. In June 2026, an antiterrorism court sentenced her and another Baloch activist to life imprisonment.
The Balochistan government says she received a fair trial and was convicted for inciting violence connected to the death of a paramilitary soldier. Her lawyer has announced an appeal. Human rights advocates have described the proceedings as secretive and fundamentally unfair. Amnesty International has demanded the activists’ immediate release and said they were prosecuted following a secret trial.
When peaceful activists are treated like terrorists, the state sends a devastating message to the next generation: peaceful dissent will bring imprisonment, while armed resistance is the only language the establishment understands.
That is how insurgencies grow.
Sindh is also losing faith in the federation
Sindh has not reached the level of armed conflict seen in Balochistan, but resentment is deepening.
Water is at the center of that anger.
The Indus River is not merely a waterway for the Sindhi people. It is the foundation of Sindh’s agriculture, history, culture and continued existence. When the federal government supported the construction of six new canals, many Sindhis believed that additional water would be diverted toward politically favored agricultural projects while farms, fishing communities and the Indus Delta suffered.
Widespread protests, highway blockades and sit-ins forced the federal government to pause the project in April 2025 until an agreement could be reached among the provinces.
The project may have been paused, but the underlying distrust has not disappeared.
Sindh’s people increasingly believe that their water, land, ports, natural resources and political power are being controlled by an establishment that is not accountable to them.
A federation cannot survive indefinitely when its provinces believe they are being treated as occupied territories or resource colonies.
The disappeared have become a symbol of the state
Enforced disappearance remains one of Pakistan’s greatest human rights disgraces.
Amnesty International reported that Pakistan’s own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances recorded another 125 cases during the first half of 2025. Human rights organizations believe the true scale may be substantially greater.
Families have spent years protesting outside government buildings, holding photographs of sons, fathers, brothers and husbands who vanished after being taken by security personnel or unidentified men.
Some victims eventually return, often traumatized and unwilling to describe what happened. Others are found dead. Many never return at all.
A government that makes its citizens disappear is not displaying strength. It is admitting that it cannot defend its authority through law, evidence and transparent justice.
Political legitimacy is collapsing
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has remained imprisoned since August 2023.
Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf party say the cases against him are politically motivated. The government and military deny engineering his imprisonment. Some of his convictions have been suspended or overturned, while other proceedings and appeals remain active.
Whatever one thinks of Imran Khan, imprisoning a political leader with enormous public support has deepened distrust in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Thousands of his supporters have protested for his release, and authorities have repeatedly responded with arrests, road closures, tear gas and security crackdowns.
Pakistan may continue to hold elections, but elections alone do not create democracy.
When opposition leaders are imprisoned, journalists are intimidated, activists disappear, courts face political pressure and the military remains the ultimate powerbroker, voting becomes an exercise without genuine civilian sovereignty.
Pakistan’s military is also a business empire
Pakistan’s armed forces are not limited to national defense.
They are involved in an extraordinary network of commercial enterprises covering cereals, fertilizer, cement, banking, insurance, petroleum, energy, real estate, education, dairy production and other industries.
A disclosure presented to Pakistan’s Senate in 2016 identified 50 commercial entities operated by the armed forces and their associated foundations. The list included Fauji Cereals, Foundation Gas, fertilizer companies, cement companies, financial institutions and other businesses.
This creates an enormous conflict of interest.
The military influences national security, foreign policy, politics, land allocation and regulatory power while military linked institutions compete inside the national economy.
From breakfast cereal to cement, from milk to gasoline and from banking to housing, the military establishment is never far away.
Pakistan does not simply have a military-industrial complex.
It has a military-commercial state.
When an institution possesses guns, political influence, intelligence capabilities, land and corporate power simultaneously, civilian businesses cannot compete on equal terms and elected governments cannot exercise genuine authority.
The Taliban strategy has turned against Pakistan
Pakistan is also confronting the consequences of decades of support for Islamist militant forces.
For years, elements of the Pakistani establishment viewed the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset that could provide influence inside Afghanistan and counter Indian power.
That policy has produced catastrophic blowback.
The Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan, commonly called the Pakistani Taliban, has attacked markets, mosques, schools, airports, military bases and police stations. Islamabad accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of sheltering the organization, an accusation Kabul denies.
In 2026, Pakistan and Taliban controlled Afghanistan moved from accusations and border skirmishes into direct air and ground confrontation. Both sides reported casualties, and fighting displaced large numbers of civilians along the border.
The forces that Pakistan once believed it could cultivate and control are now pointing weapons toward Pakistan’s own army.
Extremism cannot be domesticated.
A state cannot divide terrorists permanently into those who are useful and those who are dangerous. The ideology, networks, weapons and training eventually move across borders and turn against their original sponsors.
Israel understands this principle better than almost any country.
Religious minorities remain in constant danger
Pakistan’s Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, Shia Muslims and other vulnerable communities continue to live under the threat of blasphemy accusations, arbitrary detention, mob violence and targeted attacks.
Human Rights Watch has documented how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been exploited for blackmail, land seizures, personal revenge and financial gain, often against poor people and religious minorities.
An accusation alone can destroy a person’s life.
Even when a court eventually acquits the accused, the individual may remain at risk of assassination by extremists. Police officers, judges, lawyers and politicians have also been threatened or killed for questioning these laws.
A society cannot claim to protect religious faith while allowing mobs to act as judge, jury and executioner.
Economic stabilization is not economic recovery
Pakistan’s government frequently points to IMF agreements and slowing inflation as evidence that the economy is stabilizing.
But stabilization on paper is not prosperity for ordinary citizens.
The IMF projects consumer price inflation of approximately 7.2 percent for Pakistan in 2026. Pakistan has entered 25 IMF arrangements since becoming a member, revealing a cycle of recurring financial emergencies rather than sustainable economic reform.
Pakistan’s 2024 to 2025 Labour Force Survey reported an overall unemployment rate of 7.1 percent. Earlier official data also showed that nearly one third of Pakistan’s young people were outside employment, education or training.
Official statistics cannot fully measure the frustration of educated young people working far below their qualifications, attempting to leave the country or depending upon political connections to find employment.
Among families and communities I know, stories of educated professionals falling into despair are no longer unusual.
A nation cannot survive indefinitely by exporting its most capable young people while protecting corrupt political dynasties and military controlled economic interests.
My criticism is personal, but it is not based on personal hostility
My own family history is connected to the political history of the Zardari and Bhutto families.
President Asif Ali Zardari’s father, Hakim Ali Zardari, and my father, Ghulam Mohammed Laghari, were friends and political allies during their association with the National Awami Party political tradition.
Hakim Ali Zardari later joined the National Democratic Party, an offshoot of the banned National Awami Party, before eventually returning to the Pakistan Peoples Party.
My father later served as a political adviser to both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto in the Pakistan Peoples Party.
Therefore, my criticism of President Zardari is not based on hatred toward his family.
It is based on the condition of the country.
Asif Ali Zardari, who began his second presidential term in March 2024, was historically labeled “Mr. Ten Percent” because of corruption allegations. Zardari denied wrongdoing and was never convicted in the cases cited by Reuters.
Some opponents now use even more extreme nicknames, but political rhetoric should not be substituted for documented evidence.
There is already enough verified evidence of institutional corruption and state failure. Exaggeration only allows the establishment to avoid answering the legitimate accusations against it.
Personal relationships must never require political silence.
Loyalty to a family, political party or dynasty cannot come before loyalty to truth, justice and the people.
Why Israel and the democratic world should care
Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, a population of approximately 245 million and a strategically important position between India, China, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Sea.
Its instability cannot remain contained within its borders.
A weakening Pakistan could produce greater extremist violence, refugee movements, conflict with neighboring countries, threats to nuclear security and greater opportunities for China and radical Islamist organizations to expand their influence.
For Israel, Pakistan’s trajectory should be especially concerning.
A nuclear armed state whose institutions have historically tolerated or used Islamist militancy cannot be treated as merely another distant internal crisis. The same ideological ecosystems that persecute minorities inside Pakistan frequently spread antisemitism, conspiracy theories and hostility toward Israel beyond Pakistan’s borders.
The international community should stop rewarding the appearance of stability while ignoring the destruction of democracy underneath it.
Foreign assistance and diplomatic support should be tied to measurable reforms:
The release or fair and transparent retrial of political and human rights activists.
Independent investigations into enforced disappearances.
Protection for religious minorities.
Freedom for journalists and civil society organizations.
Civilian control over the military.
Transparency concerning military owned commercial enterprises.
Provincial control over water, land and natural resources.
Credible elections in which political parties are permitted to compete without imprisonment or intimidation.
Pakistan is not failing because Baloch, Sindhis, Pashtuns, minorities and political opponents are speaking out.
Pakistan is failing because its ruling establishment has answered legitimate demands with censorship, imprisonment, disappearances, political manipulation and military force.
No state can permanently silence its provinces, manipulate its courts, persecute its minorities, protect corrupt elites and substitute military domination for democratic legitimacy.
Eventually, fear stops working.
Eventually, the people stop believing.
Eventually, the state discovers that possessing weapons is not the same as possessing legitimacy.
Pakistan has reached that dangerous point.
The world should stop pretending otherwise.
Mansoor Laghari is a Sindhi-born American human rights activist, United States Army veteran, film producer and founder of the Global Youth Unity Project. His work focuses on combating extremism and antisemitism, defending religious minorities and building Muslim-Jewish cooperation.
