By all appearances, Pakistan is teetering on the edge of collapse. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has made deep inroads in the west, capturing towns and asserting control. In the north-east, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) continues its relentless strikes. The Pashtun resentment simmers unchecked. And in the middle of this domestic disintegration, a brief India-Pakistan military skirmish—severe and one-sided—may have inadvertently handed the Shehbaz Sharif government a diplomatic lifeline.
That lifeline, predictably, came from Washington.
The Trump administration—or rather, a segment of it still influenced by old-school realpolitik and the soft-pedaling liberal elite—appears committed to propping up Islamabad. It’s a reflex America can’t seem to shed. The IMF’s recent decision to greenlight a $1 billion loan to Pakistan, despite its dire economic indicators and a history of debt misuse, is telling. This wasn’t just about preventing default—it was about geopolitical calculus, and possibly, ideological infiltration.
The contradiction is jarring. The United States claims to be a bulwark against global terrorism, yet continues to subsidize a state that has harboured the Taliban, sheltered Osama bin Laden near a military cantonment, and used terrorism as statecraft against India and even against its people in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Amid an Indo-Pak clash, where India inflicted disproportionate damage, and Pakistan not only lost the exchange militarily but suffered a psychological and strategic setback, why did the US choose to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf?
The answer lies not just in statecraft but in subterfuge.
Washington’s foreign policy apparatus is no longer guided solely by national interest or moral clarity. It is fractured—tugged between strategic thinkers who recognize India’s rising democratic and economic value, and the embedded NGO-industrial complex backed by billionaires like George Soros, who see the world through ideological lenses, not national ones.
It is this camp—embedded in think tanks, media, and policy circles—that often romanticizes Pakistan’s instability as a “humanitarian crisis” needing Western rescue, rather than confronting it as the logical result of decades of jihadi militarism, state impunity, and ethnic suppression.
One must ask: Is the US truly interested in dismantling the roots of terrorism or merely in managing its optics?
The Baloch insurgency, for instance, didn’t spring out of nowhere. It dates back to 1948 when the sovereign princely state of Kalat was forcibly annexed by Pakistan. Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, its ruler, was coerced into signing the instrument of accession under military pressure. The Baloch have resisted ever since, not as terrorists, but as a repressed population seeking autonomy or independence. Their grievances—economic exploitation, forced disappearances, cultural erasure—remain unanswered.
But American policy doesn’t recognize legitimate self-determination movements when it’s geopolitically inconvenient. Instead, Baloch insurgents are painted with the same brush as radical Islamists—a deliberate conflation to justify arms sales, aid, and drone diplomacy.
With internal fault lines widening, Pakistan is becoming a pressure cooker. Its economy is broken. Its democracy is a shadow play. Its military is corrupt and overstretched. And the only reason it still clings to some international relevance is its nuclear arsenal and geographic location.
For the US, this location has always been more important than Pakistan’s actual conduct. Be it during the Cold War, the Soviet-Afghan war, or the post-9/11 era, Pakistan has been the reluctant but necessary pawn.
But India is no longer the passive player of the 1990s. It is a regional powerhouse, a global economic engine, and a strategic counterweight to Chinese expansionism. For Washington to alienate New Delhi—directly or via proxies—just to save a crumbling Pakistan yet again, is not just short-sighted, it’s dangerous.
Pakistan’s implosion, if and when it happens, will be the result of its hubris, jihadist policies, and internal colonization of ethnic minorities. The US can delay the fall, but cannot prevent it. The question is—at what cost, and for whose benefit?
