Pakistan Press on: Artificial Intelligence, Faiz, Balochistan, Trump: New Age Islam's Selection, 11 April 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
11 April 2025
AI, Faiz And The Fight For Our Words
Stability Without Legitimacy?
Nawaz’s Balochistan Outreach
TVET Market Is Tough
The New Trump Order
Mineral Bounties
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AI, Faiz And The Fight For Our Words
By Dr Sara Zubair
April 11, 2025
When was the last time you were compelled to consider something utterly familiar as completely new? To see — or in this case, hear — something you’ve known all your life with new eyes and ears?
Such a moment of defamiliarisation occurred for me, and judging by the response, a hall full of people attending a panel discussion on music and artificial intelligence (AI) at Beaconhouse’s SOT Events last November in Karachi.
Sung in the inimitable voice of musical legend Tina Sani, the words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz resounded through the auditorium, evoking reminders of different junctures in the history of the Subcontinent. Words of inspiration that were penned in 1941 before Pakistan even came to be. Words that resurfaced in the 1980s as a poignant reminder of freedom and agency. Words that continue to inspire us and remind us to speak truth to power.
What, you may ask, does that have to do with AI and education, which is what I’m supposed to be writing about? We’ll get there. But first, I want you to understand that I use generative AI quite a lot. What often used to take a great deal of time and thought, and a heady mix of attempted perfectionism, self-doubt and procrastination, no longer needed to. And with that came the difficult realisation that not everything needs to be expressed just so; sometimes a functional text is just that. Sometimes.
In another discussion on AI and the future of work at the same event, Dr Sohail Naqvi asked the audience to consider the source from where Large Language Models (LLMs) were getting trained. He pointed out that it is primarily data produced by ‘the Western bloc’; those of us in the Global South are rarely providing data that the LLM learns from. “One can think of it as a means of digital colonisation that is taking place”. For those who use OpenAI’s GPT series, this colonisation is beginning to show.
Certain words and phrases are instant giveaways that this school assignment, this college application, this written feedback, this ad copy, this speech, this email, this newspaper article was produced by AI. Larger questions of philosophy, belief systems, attitudes and worldviews embedded in data and language notwithstanding, we are also shedding the spellings of our former coloniser – to whom Faiz Sahib alluded in his aforementioned words – and using American spellings, because that’s what ChatGPT uses. What then of Urdu, and our regional languages and dialects?
Bol zabaan abb takk teri hai….
In a panel discussion on AI and education, Jazib Zahir argued that AI and its use is “not just about wealthy people… it’s a game-changer at every level in education” while Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy countered that he did not think AI was going to cause “any kind of significant change in Pakistan’s educational system” because what is needed for a change in education is “a change in our social values”. According to Athar Osama, also a panellist in the same session, Pakistan primarily produces low-level knowledge workers, and it is low-level knowledge work that is going to be most affected by AI. Where does that leave us?
“Currently, Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children” — an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 (Unicef). Given that alarming figure, conversations about AI adoption seem almost frivolous. But they are not. The millions who do not get formal education are already at a disadvantage. With AI in the mix, those who do make it through some years of schooling in our part of the world are now also likely to suffer.
AI adoption across industries is affecting human labour: “For poorer countries, this is engendering a new race to the bottom where machines are cheaper than humans…. The people most impacted are those with lower education levels and fewer skills, whose jobs can be more easily automated.” (R Adams, foreignpolicy.com, December 17, 2024). Machines are not only cheaper but are also less temperamental, less demanding, and less likely to protest.
Tera sutwan jism hai tera – Bol, ke jaan ab tak teri hai…
As we navigate a world that is simultaneously excited and trepidatious about AI, there is an acknowledgement that humankind has already lived through many pivotal moments that brought about rapid exponential change and survived. With innovations like the assembly line and more recently, the internet, we have hoped that it will push us away from routinised work towards greater creativity.
A viral tweet read, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes”. It seems, though, that art and writing are where generative AI wants to interfere, and my laundry and dishes are still piling up.
Yet we must believe that the human spirit is indomitable. It is this faith that can allow us to keep the trepidation at bay. Tina Jee, when speaking about her journey in the musical industry acknowledged the value of tools that help with training vocalists, or with composing, and recording music. “I know that today I can get out of the studio in one hour lekin mujhe barri tishnagi lagi rehti hai” – the longing for hours of exchanges of ideas and cups of tea, the synergy between people. The creative process demands this synergy, demands the agony of self-doubt, perhaps, because the reward of a job done is then incomparable.
This year, Unesco dedicated the International Day of Education on January 24 to AI: “AI offers major opportunities for education, provided that its deployment in schools is guided by clear ethical principles. To reach its full potential, this technology must complement the human and social dimensions of learning, rather than replace them. It must become a tool in the service of teachers and pupils, with the main objective being their autonomy and well-being” (Unesco Director-General Audrey Azoulay).
Autonomy and agency. Let us not forget that we give over our agency when we let AI do our thinking. For this particular piece, I didn’t use AI tools, even when tempted. Yes, I missed deadlines, I procrastinated (by washing dishes, I might add), and I agonised. I am rusty. For teachers, examiners and students, there is very little that can stop them from using these tools, and no check on when and whether it is acceptable. However, we must not forget that the answers and output from these tools is not benign; the words we use, the texts we read, and the songs we hear, do change us.
And so, in a conversation about AI and music, about whether an artist should give over their voice, catalogue, likeness and legacy to AI, and what it means to choose to sing certain songs at certain political junctures, Tina Jee reminded us that she sang ‘Bol’ when it was banned. She sang the first two lines and suddenly stopped. “Isn’t that funny? Listen to the words.” We heard Faiz Sahib’s words once more.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1300048-ai-faiz-and-the-fight-for-our-words
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Stability Without Legitimacy?
By Syed Mohibullah Shah
April 11, 2025
“Pakistani governments have adopted revenge-seeking habits” — Malaysian PM Dr Mahathir Mohammad said this to the prime minister of Pakistan in early 1997 in a small bilateral meeting in which I was also present.
Dr Mahathir continued: “Changes in governments have become like earthquakes where policies and personnel are frequently turned upside down. Such instability will scare away capital, and people with marketable skills will leave your country. Developing human resources is expensive and time-consuming and Pakistan cannot develop without investment and quality human resources. Governance of a country is a serious responsibility, particularly of a developing country with scarce human and financial resources and instead of arbitrariness, must be guided by a proper code of conduct”.
A similar observation on our governance and advice to abide by the established code of conduct was made by another Asian leader: “Tell me… why has Pakistan not realised its potential?” This question was asked by former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore when I presented investment proposals for Pakistan and Singapore to pool their strengths and jointly enter Central Asian markets. As head of the Board of Investment, I used to market investment opportunities in Pakistan to government and business leaders of various countries in Europe, North America and Asia.
While discussions with relevant ministries of Singapore went well about these Joint Venture (JV) proposals, they advised to get the green signal from the former PM who was then working as the senior minister and had the final say on such matters.
I put in a request for a meeting with Lee Kuan Yew and was called to Istana the next day to meet him. I presented these proposals which he must have also been briefed about by his ministries.
But instead of responding to these, he, in his usual blunt style said, “Tell me, why has Pakistan not realised its potential?” Before I could reply, he went on to answer his own question. “In Pakistan, people play politics 365 days of the year. Those in power are always looking over their shoulder to see who might be trying to stab them in the back. And those outside, are always intriguing how to gatecrash into power. In such an environment where no code of conduct is observed, where survival is a constant issue, how can any attention be paid to the country or the wellbeing of people?”
As regards the JV proposals, he regretted saying “When there is continuity in your systems of governance and end of the stab-in-the-back politics, you would be durable partners. Then you don’t have to come to me; I will be in Pakistan wanting to do business with your country”!
Two of the most successful leaders of 20th century Asia tendered the same advice, over a quarter century ago. As subsequent events show, it has all been water over the duck’s back and business as usual has continued. Two of the most important foreign direct investment (FDI) projects addressing Pakistan’s chronic problems — the five-component Keti Bandar Complex and Underground Karachi Mass Transit — fell victim to the same political earthquake and were summarily cancelled without assigning any reason, even after all finances were secured, and work had started on both.
This has become an incorrigible system with fault lines that repeatedly keep pushing Pakistan back, ultimately leading to economic stagnation.
Neither has there been continuity in the system of governance, nor abiding by the code of conduct laid down in the laws and constitution nor has the exodus of educated and skilled people been stopped.
Talking of the critical importance of human resources in the development processes as Dr Mahathir highlighted and as the success of resourceless but high-quality human resources of Japan and Singapore have shown, prioritising education and skill development pays the highest dividend and is more important than the capital and natural resources.
While Cuba spends 12 per cent of its GDP on education, Namibia 10 per cent and Iran 7.0 per cent, Pakistan spends less than 2.0 per cent of its GDP on education which shows that with exploding population growth this pittance on education would ensure that the country is not expected to take off in the foreseeable future.
Let me also share the lesson learned on the importance of an educated and skilled workforce by a well-known revolutionary. In 1979, while at MIT, I had an opportunity to hear Jamaican prime minister Micheal Manley who was a close friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In the meeting, Manley talked about his interview with Castro in which he asked the latter: If you were to do the Cuban Revolution again, what mistakes you would avoid that you committed last time? Castro replied “We made the mistake of removing most of the experts and skilled workforce of the previous Batista government. This created a huge vacuum and government working and service delivery to people suffered. We realised that recreating that qualified workforce is time-consuming and expensive. If I were to do the revolution again, we would not repeat this mistake.”
On the importance of the code of conduct, Cambridge University Press last year published the Journal of Institutional Economics issue which carried a research study of 72 countries titled ‘Legitimacy of government and governance’.
The study collected data on the legitimacy of governance from 72 countries covering 83 per cent of the world population. It took several variables into account including the consent of the governed, rule of law, equal treatment, accountability, nepotism, peace and absence of conflicts to determine where countries stand on the legitimacy of governance.
The data on the legitimacy of governance of 72 countries shows that while Denmark scores the highest, Pakistan scores the lowest on the legitimacy of governance.
Running any system by flouting human nature cannot succeed. People are rational creatures and driven by self-interest. It is obedience to the code of conduct – the laws and constitution — that forces individuals to align their self-interest with the common good of the community or the country. And gives legitimacy to governance.
After the French Revolution (1789) put an end to the un-representative rule by anybody at painful costs, legitimacy is conferred by the consent of the governed coupled with rule of law to hold the powerful accountable.
Because “Power corrupts” as Lord Action said, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Human nature being what it is, it is accountable governance and legitimacy to rule that provides a check to abuse of power and ends the stab-in-the-back politics that Lee Kuan Yew talked about.
There is a difference between politics and governance. Playing politics with everything and all the time provides fuel to the stab-in-the-back culture and violates the code of conduct which requires obedience to the laws and constitution of the country.
Pakistan must concentrate on improving the legitimacy of its governance from the bottom position among 72 countries to put it on the path of stability and continuity of policies for the peaceful development of the country. Neither of these is possible without legitimacy.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1300049-stability-without-legitimacy
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Nawaz’s Balochistan Outreach
By Editorial Board
April 11, 2025
In a positive development, former prime minister and PML-N President Mian Nawaz Sharif has told National Party (NP) chief and former chief minister Balochistan Dr Abdul Malik Baloch that he is ready to play an active role in addressing Balochistan's longstanding issues, including its political and security challenges. As protests erupt across Balochistan and Karachi over the arrests of Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) activists and the state's heavy-handed crackdown in return, Nawaz Sharif’s willingness to play an active role in resolving Balochistan's long-standing issues offers a rare moment of cautious hope. This is not the first time Nawaz Sharif and Dr Malik Baloch have come together on the Balochistan question. Their collaboration in 2013, when Dr Malik served as chief minister during Nawaz’s third term as prime minister, was marked by a level of political engagement that, while far from perfect, did give the province a fleeting sense of inclusion. But as Dr Malik has rightly pointed out, the situation today is drastically different. What was once a matter of governance and economic neglect has now morphed into a far deeper crisis of alienation, enforced disappearances and worsening militarisation.
Nawaz’s outreach and willingness to visit Balochistan and meet local political leaders carries the potential to rebuild trust between the centre and the province. Dr
Malik has outlined sensible and humane confidence-building measures (CBMs): the release of missing persons and women activists, development projects, local ownership of resources like minerals, and improved governance. These are not radical demands; they are literally the bare minimum steps towards restoring some semblance of normalcy in a province that has seen little of it. For far too long has the state relied almost exclusively on force when dealing with Balochistan. While there is no denying that militant groups like the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) must be dealt with firmly (and there really ought not be any ifs and buts on this), the indiscriminate branding of all dissent as 'anti-state' has done irreparable damage. Peaceful activists, students and nationalists are lumped together with violent insurgents, silencing legitimate grievances and pushing more youth towards alienation — or worse, towards militancy.
We have long maintained that almost most of Balochistan’s problems are political at their core and demand political solutions. No amount of force can replace dialogue, dignity, and justice. The current wave of unrest stems from a deep-seated perception of exclusion from the Pakistani mainstream — a perception that successive governments have done little to dispel. A Punjabi leader like Nawaz Sharif taking the lead on this issue is strategic and one hopes it sends a message that Balochistan's concerns are not peripheral but central to the federation's stability. Whether the powers-that-be will allow Nawaz the space to maneuver is not yet certain, but Dr Malik’s confidence in Nawaz’s track record offers some reassurance. His ability to form consensus and deliver on commitments may be exactly what is needed in this moment of national urgency. The road ahead will not be easy. Decades of mistrust and suppression cannot be undone overnight. But dialogue must begin in earnest. The youth of Balochistan, disillusioned and disenfranchised, deserve to be heard and engaged with empathy, not suspicion. If we do not offer them a place within the democratic fold, we leave them at the mercy of militants like the BLA that seek to tear the country apart. Balochistan needs a healing touch from within the federation.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1300039-nawaz-s-balochistan-outreach
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TVET Market Is Tough
Faisal Bari
April 11, 2025
TECHNICAL and vocational education and training (TVET) is a tough market to untangle. No wonder we are still struggling with it. But given where we are as an economy, we cannot afford to dillydally for long.
We currently provide technical training to very few young people in our country. This is not only true of skills that are used in manufacturing or construction, it is also true of skills in service delivery (sometimes called soft skills). The result is that there is a significant unmet demand for skilled workers, but the supply is not there, leading to a gap. There is a skills mismatch too as the skills in demand are not the ones in which young people are trained or are attracted to.
The majority of skills training programmes that we currently have are also not of good quality. This is the same problem we have with our education system. Most schools offer a poor quality of education. Most skills providers offer training of poor quality. Additionally, skills programmes are not internationally accredited and often not recognised. Given our foreign currency needs, the government would be thrilled if more Pakistanis could go abroad to work and remit money back home. But we do not have skilled person power to do that.
In fact, the problems of the skills market run much deeper. Skills do not have a good reputation. People do not want their children to acquire skills; they want their children to be doctors and not nurses or health professionals; and they want their children to be engineers and not technicians. Some of this is understandable as doctors and engineers are paid more than nurses and technicians. But a lot of it is about reputation and how society perceives skills versus higher education and the choice of a career based on skills versus jobs in offices.
I did a focus group discussion with young people, most of whom had cleared their matriculation examinations, in a village outside Sheikhupura a few years ago. The discussion made it clear that they thought a) after their education they did not want to do any skills-based work (no work with their hands); b) they were not inclined towards entrepreneurship; c) all of them wanted government jobs as they thought these were permanent, had good benefits as well as opportunities for graft and involved less work; and d) all of them were willing to pay a certain sum, whatever they or their parents could afford, to be able to get government jobs. The heroes in this crowd were the two or three young boys who had, over the last few years, been able to get jobs in the police and railways departments.
Why do skills have such a poor status in our society? Part of the answer lies in the historical development of society. The landed and moneyed did not need to work with their hands. Hired help did that work for them. One life objective was/is to reach that station where one has leisure or does higher mental work, while hired help does the menial work.
There are clear links of this to the client-patron models that have determined governance structures as well as hierarchy in our society for a long time. Jobs and economic opportunities are tied to patrons and their generosity. The state is one of the largest patrons if not the largest one. Government jobs offer the most security.
In many countries, some of the above dynamics changed as economies modernised, the manufacturing base expanded, specialisation increased and population growth was controlled. But these structural changes have not really taken place in Pakistan.
The result is people do not feel skills are respected and rewarded as they should be. And they are right. They do not want themselves or their children to be stuck in skill-based careers if they have a choice. This lack of demand also means we have few skill training programmes available. And this leads to the skill mismatch and unmet demand story that was mentioned at the start of the article.
So, how do we resolve the conundrum? TEVTAs and NAVTECs have a role to play. But despite government efforts, they have remained relatively small programmes. This is not surprising as these are supply-side initiatives. We have to work on the demand side as well. Similarly, asking the Chinese government or companies to train 10,000 people here and there is also going to be a small step. Setting up one skills university or two, that is able to give degrees in certain skills and areas, again very important, will also need to be part of a bigger effort to be really effective.
What is the big effort that is needed? If we want to change the narrative around skills, we need to bring skills into education in a big way. Schools are the spaces where most formal education now takes place. We need to find a way to bring skills into schools in a big way. This cannot be a small programme or restricted to just government schools (or it will simply reinforce existing perceptions about skills), it will have to be a large, society-level intervention. Say, half of all schools, public and private, would start skills programmes for their students. We have some 250,000 public and private schools across the country. So, some 125,000-odd should be a part of this programme.
What skills to offer, at what stage, to whom and what career paths to build from there, all of this and more will need to be worked out. And it will take time and effort and we will make mistakes too. But, given where we are on the skills debate, small efforts are not going to be able to bring the change we need and have been thinking about. Somebody needs to take the bull by the horns here.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1903444/tvet-market-is-tough
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The new Trump order
Riaz Riazuddin
April 11, 2025
WITH one stroke of his pen, a day after April Fool’s Day, Trump left the entire world bewildered at his tariff policy. He made the entire secretariat of the World Trade Organisation redundant, on the one hand, and all other countries engage in technical exercises with regard to the impact of his new tariffs on their economies, on the other.
The proponents of free trade (as if it really existed before Donald Trump’s order) are now trying to find new ammunition to attack Trump’s tariff plan. New phrases had been coined much before Trump assumed his second presidency. A popular phrase is ‘the transactional nature of his approach to dealing with international geopolitical relations’ (as if pre-Trump relations were based on ‘benevolence’!). While, as an economist, I am a proponent of free trade, I must admit that I am having trouble understanding the doomsday nature of predictions about the consequences of Trump’s tariffs in the US and the rest of the world. More on this later.
In writing the above, I run the risk of being labelled a proponent of Trump’s economic policies. I don’t want to make disclaimers such as are now common in the writings of many persons of science and knowledge who when agreeing with one point of Trump, start with a paragraph dissociating themselves with Trump’s utterings or actions.
For example, scientist Richard Dawkins recently wrote: “In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be president, but his statement that ‘sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce’ is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made.” When Trump and his vice president gave a dressing down to Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, the best analysis came from Jawed Naqvi in this paper: “The point we may have missed was Trump’s sound advice to Zelensky showing him the door: ‘You are gambling with World War III.’ It’s hard to remember an American president confessing to an ally he had been arming in a brutal war to be wary of the conflict turning into a nuclear war.”
Have we missed something in the Trump order? From my reading of the fact sheet released by the White House on April 2, 2025, it looked like an invitation to all affected countries to negotiate bilaterally with the US to move in the direction of pre-Trump free trade to the extent acceptable to him. Commentators have stated that the tariff numbers in the order are based on an allegedly erroneous formula. But what actually matters is that almost all countries have imposed higher tariffs on American goods compared to what the US has imposed on theirs. If tariffs are bad, why are these much higher in all other countries?
All countries other than the US suddenly seem to have become champions of free trade. If so, they all can and should reduce their tariffs. If not, then it means that their actions are not consistent with what they propose to champion. It is almost impossible to find fault with the principle ‘treat us like we treat you’. Trump has left the door open for free trade (relative to what it will be if no country negotiates with the US to seek concessions by somewhat lowering their tariffs) in his order. Retaliation is not a good option for any country, at least, for one like ours, that is always at the mercy of other countries. China has retaliated; it is not like us and is already a superpower and well on its way to dominating the world.
Trump’s order was an invitation to negotiate; that’s probably why Trump tweeted that China got it wrong by retaliating. Only time will tell who was right or wrong. Whichever way the tariffs have been crafted in Trump’s order, they induce uncertainty regarding future levels of the actual tariff, except baseline tariff which is 10 per cent for all countries. The formula for the level of additional tariff will be debated in negotiation. The correct level imposed by a country should be clearly known by that country’s officials. If that is lower than what Trump’s order imposed, the order has the flexibility to reduce it in future. But this process will take months, if not years, to complete. Until that process is kick-started and ends, uncertainty over America’s tariff policy will continue. This will be bad for the US and the world economy. It seems that an international recession, including in the US, is likely to occur soon. Strangely, when this uncertainty is pointing towards greater certainty about a US trade policy-induced recession, interest rate cuts by the Fed are likely to come soon, notwithstanding the Fed chair Jerome Powell’s recent talk about maintaining interest rates under heightened uncertainty. Trump seems to have visualised a recession much earlier and hence is demanding rate cuts notwithstanding the Fed’s autonomy.
The international media’s ‘doomsday’ reaction is entertaining. The Economist blurted out that Trump’s “mindless tariffs will cause economic havoc”. The Wall Street Journal chided: “Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the president isn’t advertising.” The Financial Times warned: “Trump takes world to brink of full-blown trade war.” But why is Trump risking a recession in his own country with tariffs? It is because he wants to transfer resources from US consumers to producers and his government (through tariff revenues). This is consistent with what he was campaigning before he won the trust of the majority of Americans. One has to admire the tenacity of his actions, consistent with his words, and the speed with which he is moving to deliver his agenda. No matter how loathsome he might be to Dawkins and others in the US and abroad, Trump is convinced that he will restore manufacturing supremacy in America. He does not care if prices of cars rise in his country and admits this with impunity. People like me wonder when did the US actually lose its manufacturing prowess!
https://www.dawn.com/news/1903443/the-new-trump-order
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Mineral Bounties
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
April 11, 2025
THERE is a new(ish) game in town and it is called the scramble for ‘critical’ minerals. In a world dominated by microchips and digital gadgets, and in which capitalism is greening itself through the so-called energy transition, minerals like lithium, silicon and gallium are more coveted than ever. The desire to control critical minerals is increasingly at the heart of geopolitical conflict.
In large parts of the post-colonial world, natural resource endowment has been a curse for local populations rather than a blessing. Most of sub-Saharan Africa has been pillaged for its resources, while in Pakistan, Reko Diq and Saindak offer examples of how rich-resource regions and local populations never benefit from mineral riches. As per the evolving geostrategic logics of the global order, our militarised ruling class is priming itself to preside over a new round of mineral extraction in peripheries like Balochistan, KP and Gilgit-Baltistan.
While hosting a galaxy of global investors at a high-profile conference in Islamabad earlier this week, the prime minister insisted that critical mineral exploration offered Pakistan a shortcut out of its perennial debt trap. In parallel, the new US secretary of state Mark Rubio emphasised in a phone call to his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar that Pak-US relations could improve if Islamabad grants Washington access to Pakistan’s deposits of critical minerals.
While officialdom here never needs legal cover for resource grabs at the behest of imperialism, it is worth noting that amendments to the KP Mines and Materials Act have rather suddenly been proposed in a hush-hush manner to pave the way for a ‘development’ miracle that suits global capital and local contractors alike.
For context, in 2023 the US Department of Energy published a Critical Minerals list, including the ‘electric 18’ minerals that Washington believes will be at the heart of the struggle for control over the global economy in decades to come. While the entire world is up in arms about the Trump administration’s tariff wars, especially against China, bear in mind that Joe Biden had already launched a chip war against China in 2022. Washington imposed stringent limits on the exports of any material to China, including silicon, used in the design and production of chips, which today are the essential intermediate goods in virtually all everyday consumption items, including mobile phones and cars.
Crucially, AI and advanced weapons systems are also reliant on cutting-edge chip technology — and the reaction of Big Tech and Western governments to the emergence of China’s DeepSeek confirms the high-stakes nature of technology wars today and in our putatively collective future.
Then there is the massive growth of industries like electric cars, as well as renewable energy sources in general, particularly solar. This translates into a huge demand for batteries, solar panels and other related implements, requiring huge quantities of critical minerals.
It is in this context that Pakistan’s current rulers are hedging its bets on a new wave of resource grabs; whereas until recently our fossil fuel-dominated economy revolved around oil, gas and coal, today it is all about critical minerals. Pakistan has never had huge deposits of oil and gas, but the establishment and its lackeys have always generated rents by playing off Pakistan’s geostrategic location.
This has not changed; the Gulf kingdoms, China and the US continue to grapple for influence within our ruling class. What has changed — or at least this is what the current regime believes — is that Pakistan now has significant enough deposits of critical minerals to be a big economic player in its own right.
But this would require Pakistan to have a strategy to use its minerals to industrialise, rather than just sell them off to the highest bidder. It is also telling that mineral extraction is hardly beneficial for local ecologies, no matter how one pitches the energy transition. But then again, Pakistan’s rulers have never been shy to trade in contradictions — as the ‘Green Pakistan’ corporate farming initiative, which is premised on more canal-building on the Indus river, confirms.
And then of course there is the question of what the critical minerals game will mean for the Baloch and other peoples who have only ever suffered brutalisation due to the geopolitical struggles that have played out on their lands. Beyond Balochistan, the current wave of violence in KP and the increasingly brazen ecocide in the mountainous highlands of GB have a lot to do with the race for critical minerals.
Bounty hunters are at it again. And the people whose rights and resources everyone is after are still proverbial sacrificial lambs.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1903442/mineral-bounties
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