Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan entered a new year in a state of relative calm after tumultuous 30 months, marked by risky politics, a controversial election, and an financial system teetering on the breaking point.
As home politics stabilises and financial system hopes for a turnaround in South Asia’s second-most populous nation, overseas coverage and safety challenges are prone to emerge because the nation’s most urgent considerations this 12 months.
Analysts predict a troublesome 2025 for Pakistan, because it manages ties with its speedy neighbours, allies and adversaries internationally, in addition to with the US, the place Donald Trump is about to return to energy later this month.
Most of Pakistan’s overseas coverage and safety challenges come up attributable to its neighbourhood, primarily Afghanistan to its west and archrival India on the east.
Violence by armed teams and rebels intensified throughout Pakistan after the Afghan Taliban seized Kabul in 2021. In 2024, armed assaults claimed the lives of practically 700 regulation enforcement personnel, making it one of many deadliest years in a rustic of 240 million folks.
The assaults had been primarily carried out by the Pakistan Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), an armed group that considers the Afghan Taliban its ideological twin. Separate insurgent assaults focused websites associated to the China-Pakistan Financial Hall (CPEC), a $62bn megaproject that has introduced Islamabad and Beijing nearer than ever as political and financial allies.
Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at Stimson Middle, a US-based nonprofit, and an affiliate professor of political science on the College at Albany, says Pakistan faces its “most extreme” nationwide safety problem “in no less than a decade and probably because the Nineteen Nineties”.
“Pakistan has no grand strategic alternative aside from to get its financial home so as and restore its relationships with different nice powers and regional neighbours. This possible entails years of labor, and it isn’t clear that Pakistan has years to do this work earlier than the home tumbles in,” Clary advised Al Jazeera.
Right here’s a lowdown on the international locations that would be the focus of Islamabad’s overseas coverage this 12 months:
China
Pakistani authorities often tout their “deeper than the oceans, taller than the mountains” friendship with China. However 2024 revealed cracks in that relationship.
Attacks on Chinese citizens and interests culminated, forcing a uncommon public rebuke by Beijing’s envoy to Islamabad. “It’s unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in solely six months,” Jiang Zaidong mentioned at an occasion in Islamabad in October.
Muhammad Faisal, a overseas coverage skilled on China, warns that whereas China will proceed to supply monetary help to Pakistan, any additional growth of the CPEC challenge within the nation is unlikely.
“Pakistan should skillfully navigate mounting strain from Beijing for a ‘Joint Safety Mechanism’, primarily placing Chinese language safety personnel on Pakistani territory which, in flip, would make them the goal of militants complicating present safety measures,” Faisal advised Al Jazeera.
Chinese language troopers manning the nation’s initiatives on Pakistani soil would signify an admission of Islamabad’s safety failures, improve the chance of Chinese language nationals being focused, and in addition amplify the politically delicate risk of Chinese language fighters killing Pakistani nationals.
In the meantime, consultants additionally worry that Trump’s adversarial stance in direction of China could push Beijing to demand public help from Pakistan, which is able to then be compelled to stroll a diplomatic tightrope with a view to keep away from annoying Washington, an outdated ally.
Trump has taken a persistently hardline place on China, together with his first time period seeing a commerce conflict between the 2 financial powers. In his second stint, the US chief has pledged to impose as much as 60 % tariffs on Chinese language imports.
“However since Pakistan isn’t excessive on Trump administration’s worldwide agenda, there’s a silver lining. But, uncertainty is the frequent denominator of each of Pakistan’s challenges with China,” Faisal mentioned.
Kamran Bokhari, senior director on the US-based New Strains Institute for Technique and Coverage, mentioned China’s frustrations with Pakistan stem from its in depth investments within the CPEC yielding few returns. He added that China’s predicament might work to the US’s benefit.
“China is already fairly disillusioned with Pakistan and the connection has been terse for a while. However Beijing is in a repair as a result of it’s knee-deep in Pakistan, due to CPEC funding of billions, with out getting any profit from it. So, China being in a quagmire in Pakistan is sweet for the US,” Bokhari advised Al Jazeera.
The USA
Pakistan’s relations with the US return to its independence from British rule and emergence as a brand new nation in 1947. However Islamabad-Washington ties have largely pivoted on how Pakistan aided US insurance policies within the area, primarily in Afghanistan, which noticed the Soviet invasion within the Seventies and Eighties, or the US-led “conflict on terror” following the 9/11 assaults in 2001.
With the Afghan Taliban again in energy in Kabul, the Pakistan-US strategic partnership within the South Asian area has dwindled. Whereas the US is now much less invested in Afghanistan, Pakistan has step by step moved in direction of China for financial, navy and technological wants.
Hassan Abbas, professor on the Nationwide Protection College in Washington, DC, believes Pakistan should “fastidiously navigate” its ties with the US amid tensions with China and India. He says “whereas nervousness is clear” on Pakistan’s half, dramatic modifications within the relationship seem unlikely.
“Safety points and regional challenges, corresponding to instability in Afghanistan,” Abbas advised Al Jazeera, “are prone to dominate bilateral interactions.” Abbas can be the creator of The Return of Taliban: Afghanistan after People Left.
Bokhari mentioned Pakistan stays a low precedence for the US, which has extra urgent world points such because the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the a number of Center East conflicts to sort out.
“Proper now, I don’t see any tensions rising to vital ranges between the 2 international locations and Pakistan is enjoying its playing cards very safely. In DC, the notion about Pakistan is that it’s a weak, messy state which wants to determine its personal enterprise first earlier than the rest,” he mentioned.
India
India stays the biggest foreign policy conundrum for Pakistan.
Whereas restricted interactions happen at multilateral boards, relations have been virtually frozen for years. Tensions over Kashmir additional intensified after New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its restricted autonomy in 2019, triggering a powerful condemnation by Pakistan. Each India and Pakistan rule over elements of Kashmir, however declare the Himalayan area in its entirety, making it one of many world’s longest and bloodiest navy conflicts.
“The asymmetry with India is more and more stark, and Pakistan has few choices to compel India to take it severely that don’t endanger different Pakistani overseas coverage targets,” analyst Clary advised Al Jazeera, including that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “little ideological curiosity” in rapprochement with Pakistan and “sees it as impractical throughout a interval of home instability” in Pakistan.
Abdul Basit, a former Pakistani envoy to India, views the Kashmir problem as a unbroken impasse requiring behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “India has proven no willingness for flexibility after the constitutional modification,” he advised Al Jazeera, referring to the Modi authorities’s scrapping of Article 370, the regulation that granted Indian-administered Kashmir its partial autonomy.
With India getting nearer to the West, primarily the US, over their frequent enemy in China, Basit thinks Islamabad should discover methods to have interaction with New Delhi.
“In any other case, we are going to maintain shifting from one stalemate to the following and by no means be capable of put our relationship on a trajectory of constructing regular relations. That, for me, is the crux of the matter in the case of India,” the retired envoy mentioned.
Nonetheless, Bokhari of the New Strains Institute for Technique and Coverage thinks it may very well be India that could be within the US crosshairs this 12 months and discover itself below strain over its rivalry with China.
“India has a lot nearer and sensible ties with Iran, the place it’s constructing a port. It is usually shopping for oil from Russia, which is waging a conflict in Ukraine. So that they [India] have a much bigger likelihood of being put below strain by the incoming [Trump] administration,” he mentioned.
For Pakistan to draw US consideration, based on Bokhari, it should supply a strategic worth because it did in the course of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and in the course of the post-9/11 US wars.
“If you would like US consideration, you must supply them one thing that might considerably generate an curiosity for the US, and solely then you will get consideration,” he mentioned. “It wasn’t that the US favored Pakistan or grew to become finest buddies, it was simply that Pakistan supplied a goal.”
Iran
The 12 months 2024 turned out to be a cataclysmic 12 months for Iran, because it noticed its geopolitical pursuits within the Center East endure heavy losses and Israel even launching direct assaults on its territories on a number of events.
However the 12 months started with Iran launching attacks inside Pakistan’s Balochistan province, citing an armed group known as Jaish al-Adl as a menace to its safety in border areas. The assault prompted a swift navy retaliation by Pakistan. However the tensions between the primarily Muslim neighbours didn’t escalate, with Tehran resorting to diplomacy to resolve the problem.
Umer Karim, researcher on the College of Birmingham in the UK, foresees the “uneasy rapprochement” persevering with, in addition to the emergence of latest challenges with Trump’s return to the White Home.
Karim warns {that a} deterioration in Pakistan-Iran ties might worsen border safety, emboldening Baloch separatists who’re reported to have hideouts in Iran. The Baloch rebels have been combating for many years for a separate homeland.
“Pakistan will pursue constructive engagement with Iran to keep away from additional antagonism amid rising home violence,” mentioned Karim.
