For years, Pakistan believed geopolitics could compensate for economics. When relations with Washington cooled, there was Beijing. When foreign investment slowed, there was CPEC. When questions were raised about debt, governance or political instability, Pakistan could point to its strategic geography and argue that the world simply could not afford to ignore it. That assumption is now being tested in an unexpected place: Pakistan’s electricity distribution companies. Islamabad is attempting...

Democracies are tested not when protests are peaceful, but when they become contentious. The recent confrontation between protesters and Delhi Police near Jantar Mantar has once again triggered a familiar debate. Images of tear gas, lathi charges and injured demonstrators have dominated headlines, while questions about police conduct have understandably attracted public attention. Yet reducing the episode to a binary contest of “state repression” versus “law and order” misses the larger...

Stories of grief deserve empathy. A woman waiting decades to learn the fate of her missing husband is not a political talking point; she is a human being. The term 'half-widow,' used for women whose husbands disappeared during the violent years of the Kashmir insurgency, reflects genuine pain that should never be dismissed. But pain becomes propaganda when it is stripped of context. Recent international coverage has once again chosen to frame Kashmir almost exclusively through the suffering...