According to security sources, the terrorists tried to attack the security forces’ post using an explosives-laden vehicle. But the attempt was foiled as the threat was detected, and the suicide attacker was killed, they said.

The sources said that three other terrorists were also killed in the action taken by security forces.

They said the targeted post was being used to protect the local population and to prevent the movement of Fitna-al-Khawarij — a term that the state uses for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban — towards Wana Bazaar.

The sources said that the terrorists wanted to destroy the post after their persistent failure in achieving their objectives.

A search and clearance operation was launched in the area after their unsuccessful attempt to attack the post, they added.

Last month, the district administrations of Upper South Waziristan and Lower South Waziristan had imposed Section 144 in several areas due to security concerns and the movement of security forces.

Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code is a legal provision that empowers district administrations to prohibit an assembly of four or more people in an area for a limited period.

South Waziristan, as well as the rest of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has been facing terrorism for a long time, with a monthly security assessment released by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) stating that after two consecutive months of improvement, Pakistan’s security situation deteriorated sharply in May, driven primarily by escalating terrorist violence in KP and Balochistan.

More to follow

“Despite reduced financial resources, every effort had been made to ensure that provincial development projects and grants remained unaffected,” he said while addressing a ceremony organised by the Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) to present a gold medal to Indus Hospital CEO Dr Abdul Bari.

The CM said that the concerns raised by KATI regarding the Yellow Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project would be resolved through consultations with all stakeholders. He said valuable lessons had been learned from the Red Line project and the government would strive to complete the Yellow Line project on time without creating unnecessary inconvenience to the public.

The CM said that the grant had been increased every year in the past for Indus Hospital, but this year the increase was not possible due to financial constraints. The Sindh government allocated Rs9 billion for development works in Karachi’s industrial zones, including Rs2bn for KATI, he added.

Murad says govt has allocated Rs9bn for industrial zones’ uplift

Earlier, KATI President Muhammad Ikram Rajput said the law and order situation in Karachi had improved significantly, enabling the business community to perform its activities more effectively.

Deputy Patron-in-Chief Zubair Chhaya warned that implementation of the Yellow Line Project in its current form would disrupt commercial activities in the Korangi Industrial Area. He urged the government to redesign the project in consultation with KATI and all other stakeholders.

Dr Abdul Bari said the charitable institution established in 2005 had grown into a nationwide healthcare network. What began as a 150-bed hospital has expanded into 15 hospitals across Pakistan, while Indus University was also expected to be launched soon. He said the hospital’s annual budget had increased from Rs100 million at its inception to Rs68 billion, enabling it to provide free medical treatment to around 600,000 patients daily.

Governor visits SITE area

Separately, Sindh Governor Nehal Hashmi assured the industrialists in the SITE area of his full support in the resolution of issues faced by the industrial community. Earlier, SAI President Abdul Rehman Fudda briefed the governor on issues faced by the industry, such as energy crunch and high power tariffs.

He proposed establishing SITE Development and Management Company like Korangi, Landhi, Federal B Area, and North Karachi Industrial Area, and handing over ownership to the actual stakeholders.

Patron-in-Chief Zubair Motiwala said the utility prices should be kept at regionally competitive levels to help industries excel in exports.

He also suggested setting up a Pak-China export promotion body to increase exports to China.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

A BHC bench comprising Justices Gul Hassan Tareen and Najmuddin Mengal heard the matter and ordered notices to be issued to the relevant authorities, seeking their response.

During the proceedings, Addi­tional Advocate General Akbar Shah appeared on behalf of the provincial government, while advocates Jadain Dashti and Nadia Baloch represented the petitioner.

Dr Mahrang has challenged the judgement of the Quetta anti-terrorism court, which sentenced her to life imprisonment in a case related to the killing of a security personnel member.

SC issues notices to respondents in BYC leader’s bail plea

By admitting the appeal, the high court has agreed to hear the case on its merits. The life sentence remains in force unless it is suspended or set aside by the court in subsequent proceedings.

SC proceedings

In a related development, the Supreme Court issued notices to the respondents in denial of post-arrest bail in a case registered against Dr Mahrang under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), 1997.

Headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, a three-judge SC bench took up a set of cases filed by Dr Mahrang and other BYC leaders, Beebow Baloch and Beebarg Baloch. During the hearing, Justice Mazhar inquired whether separate FIRs had been registered against all three. In response, Advocate Jibran Nasir said separate FIRs had been registered against his three clients.

He explained that two of the six witnesses had recorded their testimonies in the case against Dr Mahr­ang, adding that all the sections included in the FIRs were bailable.

Nasir Iqbal in Islamabad also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfaraz Dogar issued the notices while hearing a petition filed by the Judicial Activism Panel against the June 3, 2025, notification. Counsel for the petitioner, Mahfouz Bukhari, argued that the decision to impose a higher toll on low-balance vehicles was arbitrary, excessive and without lawful justification.

The chief justice observed that the impugned decision appeared to be a policy measure of the government and questioned how the court could interfere in such matters.

In response, the petitioner’s counsel said that even policy decisions were subject to judicial review if they were unreasonable, discriminatory or violated the law. He contended that the enhanced toll imposed on motorists with low M-Tag balances was disproportionate and lacked a rational basis.

After hearing the preliminary arguments, the court issued notices to the Ministry of Communications and other respondents, directing them to submit their replies on the petition.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

The stability is real. There is no doubt about that. A wall of high repayment obligations that first loomed into view back in February 2021 and remained persistently high since then has finally started to come down. They not only met all these obligations and paid down their debt, but also bui­lt reserves through it all — organically — and not borrowed reserves.

The return of stability to Pak­istan’s external sector after the near catastr­ophic volatility of 2021-2023 is one for the history books. The most ferocious inflationary fire in our history was doused. The most precarious foreign exchange reserves position was rebuilt. The most runaway fiscal train wreck was returned to surpl­uses on its primary balance. The state saved itself well.

But in order to do so it wrecked the livelihoods of its own people and nearly choked its own economy to death. Inflows were — in fact still are — diverted ruthlessly to state coffers. Interest rates were hiked to historic highs that were unthinkable even a few years ago.

Taxes weighed like a millstone around the necks of firms and wealth creators. Nobody was allowed to make money or breathe too freely during the years the state was busy rebuilding its accounts. That’s the stability they now tell us is their signature success.

Admittedly, nobody wanted to see the instability persist. And now that it has been surmounted, at least to the extent that inflation no longer ravages the land and reserves no longer teeter on the edge of a cliff, it is worth asking whether it has not returned in some other form. Beneath the floor that feels solid, can we feel powerful forces moving?

With rising discontentment at home leading to the spread of disaffection, the leadership is stuck in a quagmire.

Some of the persistent instability can now be seen in the growing disaffection of populations along the periphery of Pakistan’s heartland of central Punjab and upper Sindh. This is a disturbing trend and must be taken very seriously. To the extent that it has economic roots, the growing struggle that day-to-day life has become for the common citizenry can be said to lie at the heart of it.

A population immersed in deprivation and misery is more amenable to the message of movements and parties that preach rebellion or advocate the politics of disruption and division. None of the parties fomenting rebellion, disruption or division on Pakistan’s periphery these days can be said to be the carrier of progressive or even pro-people politics. But they are all reaping a harvest of hate that has been nurtured and fertilised with deprivation.

The other reason to be concerned is the return of hostilities between Iran and the US, though it remains my view that this will prove to be another short-lived flare-up in what is turning out to be a long-drawn-out, gruelling test of nerves between the two adversaries. It is possible this could drag out for months. The problem for Pakistan is that the leadership here has been heavily invested in reaping the dividends from their diplomatic efforts, and those efforts are taking a long time to bear fruit.

At the heart of the matter is Iran’s unwillingness to let go of the Strait of Hormuz. They had decided very early in this conflict that they would rather see a return to hostilities than bargain on easing their hold on the strait. With the latest flare-up, they have proved this point. Whatever settlement eventually ends this war, it will see Iran in control of the waterway, with full rights on who gets to transit and on what terms. For a moment it seemed that the Trump administration had reconciled itself to this reality. But the flare-up proves otherwise.

With rising discontentment at home leading to the spread of disaffection, the leadership is stuck in a quagmire. The hard-fought stability they tout as their success rescued the state from the throes of its own non-viability. But now instability has returned and is churning up growing numbers of people and leading them to gather around messages that the state would prefer to stamp out with violence. And the much-vaunted peace dividend has been pushed into a more distant future while there are no organic drivers of growth at home.

This is where the danger lies. The stability we have today was purchased with suppressed demand, and suppressed demand cannot be a permanent state of affairs. Sooner or later, the economy, along with the people, must be allowed to breathe again. And the moment that happens, the old appetites will reawaken — for imports, for credit, for dollars.

The state has built no shock absorbers for that moment. Reserves look healthy against the drought of recent years, but measure them against the import bill of an economy growing at even four per cent and the picture changes quickly. And should the flare-up in the Gulf drag on, and oil prices catch fire the way freight and insurance rates already have, the arithmetic changes quicker still.

The rulers face a choice they would rather not acknowledge. They can hold the economy in its induced coma indefinitely, and watch the harvest of hate on the periphery grow richer with each passing season. Or they can release their grip and risk squandering the stability they paid for with the people’s livelihoods.

None of these are palatable. Hence the situation is now best described as a quagmire. What they cannot do is continue to celebrate. The floor beneath their feet may feel solid, yes. But the ground below it is moving.

The writer is a business and economy journalist.

khurram.husain@gmail.com

X: @khurramhusain

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

Heatwaves once confined to Sindh’s cities and Punjab’s plains now reach the Upper Indus Basin (UIB). In June 2026 alone, the Met Office issued its second Glof (glacial lake outburst flood) alert of the month, warning that sustained high temperatures across GB and KP were accelerating glacier and snowfield melt to the point that existing lakes were expanding and new ones forming in real time.

This follows a pattern of near-annual escalation: in August 2025, a Glof from the Shishper glacier tore through Hassanabad Nullah in Hunza, severing the Karakoram Highway, in the highest-volume event since 2018. Each year now sets its own benchmark.

Underneath the visible flooding sits a less visible mechanism. Central Karakoram’s glaciers are not simply shrinking the way the Himalayan glaciers to their east are; some have been stable or even advancing since 1990 — a documented anomaly.

But stability at the surface has not meant stability underneath. Meltwater cuts channels through the ice itself, moving downward by gravity, forming englacial tunnels that destabilise glaciers from within even where their outward mass looks intact.

That is why river discharge from central Karakoram basins rose through 1985-2010 even as the glaciers appeared, by satellite, to hold steady. The lakes are the visible symptom; the tunnels are the mechanism; community displacement is the result. Pakistan currently counts 3,044 glacial lakes, with some 36 formally classified as hazardous and likely to affect over 7.1 million people.

Precipitation is changing structurally, in step with temperatures. Snow consolidates into firn, and firn into ice, a process called firnification, but now there’s less time for the process: more runs off as meltwater first, so the basin draws down its snowpack faster than it replenishes. High-altitude western UIB stations like Shendure, Yasin, Ziarat, Rattu, Chilas and Shigar, show a statistically significant rise in monsoon precipitation at elevation.

Climate models project the monsoon extending north and northwest into the UIB, with a rising share of the basin’s precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. The monsoon, once a lowland event arriving after the high-altitude melt season had run its course, is beginning to overlap it. Rain on an already melting snowpack accelerates run-off.

We have a flood regime that no longer respects Pakistan’s disaster-response calendar.

The consequence is a flood regime that no longer respects Pakistan’s disaster-response calendar or its fourth national flood protection plan (2018-2028). Glofs and monsoon floods, once sequential risks with distinct seasons and targets, are becoming concurrent and compounding, a different planning problem entirely.

Debris and mudslides change the underlying ecology in ways ordinary flooding does not: a riverine flood leaves silt, while a flow carrying boulders and glacial till causes irreversible loss and damage to the ecosystem. Buner and Lower Dir showed this in August 2025, when flash floods carried boulders flattening neighbourhoods and leaving survivors standing on rubble that used to be farmland.

There is ‘non-economic loss and damage’, the central pillar of the global loss and damage discourse. It shows up in the erosion of proud local heritage of grafting glaciers. GB is home to more than 50 languages and dialects, including Domaaki and Wakhi, classified by Unesco as critically endangered, and Burushaski, a language spoken nowhere else on earth. These survive orally, in valleys now being depopulated by flood damage and outmigration, so every displaced household moves further from the people who still speak the language at home.

The same is true of the region’s archaeological record: more than 50,000 petroglyphs, some dating to 5,000 BC, line the Karakoram Highway corridor between Hunza and Shatial, carved by the traders and pilgrims who passed through GB on the Silk Route. The 2022 floods destroyed a significant share of the inscribed rock surfaces at the Thalpan site near Chilas. What remains is not protected by any Unesco listing. It is protected by distance and isolation, both of which are now being removed.

GB is not the first place in the Himalayan region to witness this kind of disaster, and need not build its response method from scratch. On June 15, 2021, a glacial lake called Pemdan in Nepal breached in the Melamchi-Indrawati watershed north of Kathmandu. The breach destabilised a landslide dam downstream; the combined debris flow, over 10 metres deep in places, displaced hundreds of people and severed the water supply serving much of Kathmandu.

Research at ICIMOD has argued that no single hazard model would have caught it: reconstructing the event required integrating satellite data, hydrodynamic modelling, and machine learning to trace how the outburst, the dam failure and the rainfall interacted.

In GB’s case, a compound hazard is two risks overlapping in time — monsoon rainfall coinciding with the melt season. A cascading hazard triggers the next in sequence: a heatwave leading to Glof and then debris flow, which causes displacement, outward migration, eroded livelihoods and a shortened tourism season central to GB’s cash economy. Melamchi was both at once, and so is GB now.

Response infrastructure is becoming maladaptive: 250 engineering structures and 284 early warning systems installed across GB and KP since 2017, built against a threat that arrived in one form at a time. It is now being asked to hold out against two or more hazards and needs to scale to the pace of lake formation rather than trail it.

Clearly, hazard modelling needs to move towards the joint, cascade-aware approach rather than treating Glofs, monsoon shifts and landslide risks as separate problems for separate agencies. The alternative: keep treating GB’s disasters as remote and isolated events, until the water arrives.

The writer represents Pakistan on the Board of Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

Violent confrontations have claimed some 30 lives of both security personnel and protesters since last month. Rawalakot, the focal point of the protest movement, has been under curfew for about six weeks.

The JAAC’s demands have focused on governance issues and economic concerns, with most being accepted by the authorities. But its call for the abolition of seats in the AJK legislature for refugees from India-held Kashmir has created a deadlock. Violent clashes on Tuesday resulted in at least nine deaths. Yesterday, the JAAC launched its ‘long march’ on Muzaffarabad.

The primary concern of all stakeholders should be the restoration of calm in AJK. Too many valuable lives — of both LEAs and civilians — have been lost, and while violent elements must be prosecuted by the state, the only way out of this imbroglio is through the political process.

Officials say that some JAAC activists have been armed. However pressing the JAAC considers its demands, armed action against the state cannot be tolerated and those involved in attacks on LEAs must face the law. For the moment though, temperatures must be brought down, and the authorities and the JAAC must show flexibility and engage each other instead of hardening their respective positions.

The authorities have valid concerns about the JAAC’s mode of protest and some of its demands; however, they should talk to the group instead of trying to crush it — a reaction that has often backfired in the past. On its part, the JAAC must communicate its demands in a peaceful manner, and recognise that constitutional issues, such as the question of refugee seats, can only be settled in the legislature and not on the streets.

It is incumbent on political actors within AJK and Pakistan to step up efforts for a negotiated solution to this crisis. In AJK yesterday, PPP chief Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari proposed a truth and reconciliation commission for settling the matter, while the Jamaat-i-Islami has formed a ‘peace jirga’ in an attempt to mediate between the AJK administration and the JAAC.

The PTI has similarly called for a multiparty moot to develop a ‘national consensus’, especially with regard to the regional polls scheduled for later this month. It goes without saying that fair elections require a peaceful atmosphere and a level playing field for all contenders.

Rather than using only administrative and security tools to deal with the situation, the government must keep political channels open with the JAAC and carefully listen to their demands so that normal life can resume in AJK as soon as possible.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026