A Legacy of Duplicity: Tracing Pakistan’s Double Cross From 9/11 to the Trump Era

Introduction

For decades, the geopolitical alliance between the United States and Pakistan has been characterized by a profound and dangerous paradox: a public marriage of strategic necessity masking a private reality of calculated betrayal. This complex dynamic traces its roots to the 1980s, when Washington and Islamabad collaborated to arm the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, effectively institutionalizing terrorist proxies as a lethal extension of Pakistani foreign policy. This analysis covers Pakistan’s double cross of United States after 9/11 where it has regularly abetted terrorist groups networks from Al Qaeda to other terrorist groups against India committing one of the most dastardly attacks on Mumbai 26/11 in the year 2008.

The historical timeline of events of Pakistan’s double cross, details of its sponsorship of terrorism from 9/11 to 26/11 attacks (2001-08) in Part 1 to 9 this article are based on the groundbreaking investigative reporting of the late Syed Saleem Shahzad. His seminal 2011 book, “Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11”, remains an indispensable primary source for understanding of Pakistan’s double cross and sponsorship of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

On 29th May 2011, he was kidnapped in Pakistan and later found dead two days later in a canal 150 Kms south east of Islamabad. It is believed that Syed a Pakistani Investigative journalist was killed for disclosing the links of Pakistani military officials with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist group. His last report was filed on the Al Qaeda attack on PNS Mehran base in Karachi on 22nd May 2011 days after Osama Bin Laden was killed by USA. He reported that some Pakistani navy officials were involved along with Al Qaeda in those attacks. ISI had also earlier warned him for his investigative articles that exposed Pakistani army’s relationship with terror groups. The Obama administration & the CIA later concluded that he was killed by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.

The subsequent historical facts presented in this article from Part 10 to 18 (2009- 2026 till date) represent an original synthesis, detailing Pakistan’s hybrid regime, its collapse, resource diplomacy, and the contemporary US geopolitical pivot amid its ultimate double cross of Americans. The purpose of this academic research is to expose Pakistan’s narrative of victimhood of terrorism given that it is University of Terrorism that has cultivated terror groups as instruments of state policy. Ironically, Pakistan the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the World, has lived off at alms of Western countries mainly United States, IMF and gets to be mainstreamed as an interlocutor, peacemaker and a member of the Board of Peace formed by President Trump.

Driven by an existential fear of India and an unrelenting pursuit of strategic depth, Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus perfected the art of the double game. Following the September 11 attacks, this duplicity reached unprecedented heights. Pakistan swiftly positioned itself as an indispensable frontline ally in America’s War on Terror, absorbing billions in Western military and economic aid. Yet, simultaneously, elements within the Pakistani deep state provided sanctuary, logistical support, and operational guidance to the very insurgents the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that were maiming coalition forces just across the border.

This era of high-stakes deception ultimately culminated in the profound humiliation of 2011, when Osama bin Laden, the architect of 9/11, was discovered living comfortably in a fortified compound in Abbottabad, mere miles from Pakistan’s premier military academy. Rather than permanently severing ties, however, this history of betrayal has merely served as a prologue. Today, shifting global power dynamics have once again forced Western capitals to navigate the treacherous waters of Islamabad’s strategic ambivalence, proving that in the ruthless arena of geopolitics, leverage consistently eclipses trust.

Part 1: The Waziristan Reorganisation and Western Blindspots (2005–2007)

Following the disruption of the September 11 attacks, both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban embarked on a calculated recovery phase that achieved critical mass by the end of 2005. A foundational element of this resurgence was Al-Qaeda’s establishment of the “Islamic State of North Waziristan” alongside the “Islamic State of South Waziristan”. These autonomous zones acted as powerful recruitment hubs, attracting local tribal demographics, Afghan insurgents, Pakistani terrorists, and international combatants. Operating from these secure Pakistani territories, Al-Qaeda effectively projected insurgent violence deep into southern Afghanistan. At the same time, the Taliban achieved sweeping territorial gains, expanding their footprint across Kunar, Nanagarhar, Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Gardez, Urzgan, Zabul, and Kandahar. By late 2006, the Taliban had established total administrative authority over seven vital districts within Kandahar. However, securing South Waziristan was arguably their most strategic victory, as it provided an unparalleled staging ground for relentless assaults into Afghanistan’s Helmand province a territory that remains one of the most violent theatres for Western coalition forces.

While the United States recognized this terrorist consolidation in the tribal belt by late 2006, its intelligence apparatus remained unaware of the sheer scale of the escalation. The Taliban had effectively usurped control of south-western Afghanistan, managing Helmand and vital sectors of Kandahar, while security architectures in Zabul and Urzgan completely degraded. For the first time in the conflict, the coalition was forced to view the Taliban not as a fractured remnant, but as a premier military adversary. Blindsided by a fierce Taliban spring offensive, a furious Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Islamabad on February 26, 2007, to directly confront the Pakistani leadership. Cheney delivered an ultimatum to General Pervez Musharraf, warning of severe geopolitical fallout if Pakistan did not immediately execute a full-scale military clearing of the tribal agencies.

During these discussions, Cheney fiercely criticized past non-aggression pacts, specifically highlighting instances where Islamabad provided financial restitution to Taliban commanders for military-inflicted damages. He further accused the Pakistani state of harbouring functional alliances with terrorist factions, most notably the Haqqani network. The diplomatic crisis deepened the very next day when Cheney travelled to the Bagram air base in Kabul, which was subsequently targeted by a suicide bomber, resulting in 23 fatalities and 20 injuries. Intelligence later confirmed the attack was masterminded from North Waziristan by Abu Laith al-Libi. Although only loosely affiliated with Al-Qaeda at the time of the bombing, al-Libi would eventually ascend to become a formalized operational leader for the group across the Af-Pak region.

Part 2: Geopolitical Realignment and Al-Qaeda attacks (2006–2008)

Vice President Cheney’s 2007 diplomatic intervention triggered a fundamental paradigm shift in how Western capitals approached South Asia. Cheney correctly assessed that Al-Qaeda exercised total hegemony over Pakistan’s tribal belt, which served as the lifeblood of the Taliban insurgency. Consequently, Western strategists abandoned the theory that Pakistan was merely a passive sanctuary, concluding instead that the Pakistani state was the epicentre of the conflict; thus, any viable resolution required internal Pakistani restructuring. To engineer regional stability, Washington and London initiated deep political interventions. A covert political strategy initiated in February 2006 reached its climax in April 2007, aligning precisely with mounting US demands for a comprehensive war on terror. By the end of 2006, General Musharraf had capitulated to US demands to organize national elections. This diplomatic engineering produced the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in October 2007, a controversial legal framework that absolved Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari of all corruption allegations, paving the way for their unhindered return to domestic politics. Consequently, early 2008 witnessed a transition of power to a liberal-secular coalition helmed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), supported by the Awami National Party (ANP), Muttehida Quami Movement (MQM), Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) Fazlur Rahman faction, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q).

However, as American pressure forced military escalations, local peace treaties disintegrated. On May 20, 2007, the Miranshah accord originally signed in September 2006 by terrorists Hafiz Gul Bahadar, Maulana Sadiq Noor, and Maulana Abdul Khaliq completely collapsed, plunging Pakistan into an era of unprecedented bloodshed. While the United States injected billions to fortify the regional military apparatus, Al-Qaeda pre-emptively altered the battlefield by bringing the insurgency into Pakistan’s metropolitan centres. This urban warfare doctrine, delayed until the Taliban’s 2006 summer offensive waned, demonstrated Al-Qaeda’s superior capability in cultivating domestic political alliances. Operating under Ayman al-Zawahiri’s strategic framework, Egyptian ideologue Sheikh Essa Al-Misri was dispatched to execute Al-Qaeda’s urbanization strategy in Pakistan. From 2003 onward, Sheikh Essa functioned as a liaison to build a sympathetic Islamic political bloc within the cities. His high-level engagements included meetings with Qazi Hussain Ahmed of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Hafiz Muhammad Saeed of the Wahhabi-aligned Jamaat ut Dawa (JD/LeT), the Deobandi leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman (JUI), and caliphate advocate Dr. Israr Ahmed. Ultimately, the most profound and actionable alliance was forged with Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the sibling clerics overseeing Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, who wholly internalized Al-Qaeda’s terrorist vision.

Part 3: The Lal Masjid Siege and the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto (2007)

The clerics of Lal Masjid maintained direct communication channels with senior Al-Qaeda leadership, including Sheikh Essa and Tahir Yaldochiv, receiving tailored operational guidance. By 2007, this mosque had morphed into a brazen Al-Qaeda forward operating base situated in the heart of Islamabad, openly challenging the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the military’s Rawalpindi-based General Headquarters (GHQ). Despite President Musharraf’s desire to neutralize the threat, military intelligence consistently vetoed intervention. They calculated that raiding a seminary attended by the daughters of elite bureaucrats, businessmen, and military officers during a period of hyper-elevated anti-American sentiment would ignite an uncontrollable national crisis. Simultaneously, Washington pushed Musharraf to forge an alliance with Benazir Bhutto’s secular bloc to counter this surging terrorist sympathy, while Western agencies actively charted Al-Qaeda’s domestic infrastructure.

When leaks of the Musharraf-Bhutto negotiations surfaced, Lal Masjid retaliated by activating its Crisis Action protocol, highlighted by the seminary’s female wing, Jamia Hafsa, kidnapping an accused brothel operator. The political environment deteriorated further on March 9, 2007, when Musharraf arbitrarily removed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary, inadvertently sparking a massive, nationwide lawyers’ movement backed by civil society and the press. The breaking point arrived in July 2007, when the military laid siege to Lal Masjid. Troops eventually breached the compound; Maulana Abdul Aziz was captured attempting to flee in a burqa, while his brother Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, their mother, Aziz’s son, and scores of students were killed in the crossfire. Parallel to this violence, the political landscape shifted. Musharraf intended to appoint General Tariq Majeed as Army Chief, elevating him instead to the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on October 7, 2007. Bowing to US preferences, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was made COAS, an unprecedented historical anomaly where a sitting ISI Director General ascended to the army’s top post. To honour the US-brokered political deal, the October 5, 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) provided blanket amnesty for corruption and terrorism charges spanning January 1, 1986, to October 12, 1999, legally enabling the Bhutto family’s political resurrection. Recognizing that a Democratic victory under Barack Obama in 2008 was likely, Al-Qaeda plotted to assassinate Bhutto during the Bush transition to fundamentally destabilize US regional policy. After stalking her campaign for months, terrorists succeeded on December 27, 2007, killing Bhutto in Rawalpindi. Her assassination plunged Pakistan into anarchy; law enforcement evaporated as mobs destroyed infrastructure and torched dozens of railway trains across her native Sindh province.

Part 4: The Decline of Musharraf and the Ascent of Zardari (2007–2008)

Pervez Musharraf officially retired his military commission on November 27, 2007, effectively neutering his executive authority. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto completely nullified their power-sharing agreement, and with the Bush administration preparing its exit, Washington lacked the political capital to enforce new stabilization measures. Musharraf’s political leverage had already been fatally compromised. Under coercion from Saudi Arabia, he had permitted the return of his bitter rivals, Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif. Furthermore, the lethal fallout from the Lal Masjid operation and his suspension of the judiciary on November 3, 2007, deeply fractured his political base, the PML-Q. This power vacuum allowed Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N to capture significant parliamentary territory, making their participation mandatory in any future coalition government.

Despite shedding his uniform, Musharraf remained the nominal supreme commander and desperately attempted to unseat General Kayani on two separate occasions. He offered the COAS position to General Tariq Majeed, who staunchly refused, citing that such a manoeuvre would violate institutional discipline and provoke an internal military crisis. This failure to dislodge Kayani marked the terminal decline of Musharraf’s presidency. In an outcome Washington had wholly failed to anticipate, Asif Ali Zardari a man historically reviled by the military establishment captured the presidency. This elevation granted Zardari the title of supreme commander of the armed forces and direct oversight of highly lucrative US-funded economic initiatives in the tribal belt. Having assumed control of the PPP following his wife’s assassination, Zardari found himself leading a coalition prosecuting the War on Terror, despite facing intense hostility from the PML-N, who had previously incarcerated him. Furthermore, his international credibility was heavily damaged by extensive reporting in the New York Times and Washington Post detailing his alleged financial malfeasance during Bhutto’s previous terms in office.

Part 5: Ideological Infiltration and Military Defections

The sociological landscape of Pakistan offered highly fertile ground for Al-Qaeda’s extremist doctrines. The ideological conditioning from the 1979–1993 anti-Soviet Afghan jihad, combined with the subsequent Taliban governance of Afghanistan, catalysed the proliferation of thousands of radical seminaries within a single decade. The Pakistani state proactively harnessed this militancy, cultivating terrorist proxy organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, Harkatul Mujahadeen, and Jaish-e-Mohammad to wage an asymmetric war into Indian’s Jammu & Kashmir state. This radicalization was institutionalized during General Zia-ul-Haq’s eleven-year dictatorship, which deeply embedded jihadist principles within the military’s rank and file. Consequently, when the US invasion of Afghanistan forced Islamabad into a reluctant alliance with Washington, anti-American fury swept through the armed forces, prompting a wave of desertions.

A glaring manifestation of this internal crisis was the 2003 defection of Major Haroon and Captain Khurram, who abandoned their commissions to join Lashkar-e-Taiba, effectively turning the group into a rogue extension of the military. Captain Khurram, a veteran of UN Peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone (2001–2002), travelled to Afghanistan with fellow defector Major Abdul Rahman to combat British forces in Helmand, where Khurram was ultimately killed in 2007. Major Haroon, a veteran of the 1999 Kargil conflict who held deep contempt for the perceived cowardice of Pakistani top brass, relocated to North Waziristan. There, he lectured senior terrorist figures, including Mullah Nazir and Sirajuddin Haqqani, presenting asymmetric warfare doctrines modelled after the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and the Viet Cong. Haroon devised a strategic initiative for January 2008 to paralyze NATO logistics by cutting off the Karachi supply chain a route where 80% of cargo traversed the Khyber Agency and 20% utilized the Chaman-Kandahar corridor. Haroon’s ultimate objective was to terrorize the Pakistan Army into abandoning the US alliance. He compiled an assassination list targeting pro-American senior officers, successfully orchestrating the murder of retired Major General Faisal Alvi as a psychological warning to serving generals. By utilizing jihadist cadres to assassinate both NATO troops and Pakistani military personnel, Haroon exposed the profound depths of radical indoctrination festering within the armed forces.

Part 6: The Architect of 26/11 attacks on Mumbai (2007–2008)

Recognizing that Washington was actively encouraging Indian involvement in Afghanistan to check Pakistani influence, Major Haroon identified an opportunity to manipulate this regional animosity. Starting in 2007, Haroon collaborated with his operational commander, Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, to architect a diversionary strategy: expanding the theatre of terror directly into India. Haroon theorized that a catastrophe on the scale of 9/11 would inevitably force India to declare war on Pakistan. Under the threat of an existential eastern front, the Pakistan Army would have no choice but to terminate its counter-insurgency operations against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the west. To operationalize this, Haroon recruited Major Abdul Rahman, an expert on Indian demographics and a close associate of his late brother, Khurram.

Simultaneously, the ISI had already authorized and financed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to launch a fresh wave of violence in Jammu & Kashmir for late 2007. However, enhanced fencing along the Line of Control rendered overland infiltration highly problematic, prompting LeT to explore maritime insertions from the desolate Thatta coastline in Sindh. Intervening in this planning phase, Haroon convinced LeT commander Abu Hamza to abandon a localized skirmish in Jammu & Kashmir in Favor of a monumental urban assault. Utilizing Major Rahman’s extensive intelligence gathering which included detailed maps and photographic reconnaissance of foreign-frequented hubs in Mumbai, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel and Nariman House, Haroon formulated the tactical blueprint. The operatives would depart on a Pakistani vessel, commandeer an Indian fishing trawler, and execute a mass-casualty event designed to force New Delhi into military escalation. Abu Hamza escalated the proposal to LeT’s supreme commander, Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, who relocated to Karachi for two months of intense recruitment and training.

Executed meticulously according to Haroon’s design, the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks shocked the global community. The survival and capture of operative Ajmal Kasab provided Indian intelligence with a comprehensive roadmap of the plot’s Pakistani origins. As anticipated, India was calibrating its options of a limited strike, drafting plans to bombard LeT infrastructure in Lahore, Muridke, and Muzaffarabad. Al-Qaeda’s strategic diversion was a resounding success; the threat of Indian retaliation instantly froze military operations against terrorists in the Swat Valley, Mohmand, Bajaur, and the Waziristan cementing the success of the ploy, domestic terrorists like Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah pledged to fight alongside the Pakistani military against India a bizarre alliance of convenience confirmed to the media by ISI Director General Lt.-Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha.

Part 7: Thwarted Ambitions and the Chicago Cell (2009)

Washington intervened decisively to prevent the realization of Al-Qaeda’s ultimate objective: a full-scale regional war. US diplomats flooded Islamabad and New Delhi, aggressively communicating that an armed conflict would solely serve the interests of extremist factions. By securing guarantees that Pakistan would investigate the Mumbai planners, the US effectively neutralized the immediate threat of war. Frustrated by this diplomatic de-escalation, Major Haroon ordered Major Abdul Rahman to pivot strategies and utilise the 313 Brigade for subsequent operations. Rahman returned to Indian territory to conduct advanced reconnaissance, capturing imagery of highly secure targets including the parliament building in Delhi, the National Defence College, and critical nuclear research facilities in Hyderabad and Mumbai. Rahman’s operational doctrine was highly adaptive; if a daytime strike intended to decapitate military leadership at the National Defence College proved unfeasible, the operative teams were instructed to assault the parliament building instead.

The plot encountered friction when the ISI detained Zahid Iqbal, a 313 Brigade affiliate, in Islamabad in July 2009. Iqbal exposed Rahman, leading to the major’s temporary arrest; however, due to a lack of domestic terrorism charges within Pakistan, Rahman was swiftly freed and immediately resumed plotting Indian sabotage. Ultimately, critical intelligence breached the network, reaching the FBI and precipitating the capture of Rahman and his entire cell. The full scope of the conspiracy was dragged into the light in October 2009 with the FBI’s arrest of Tahawwur Rana and David Headley in Chicago. David Hadley’s testimony laid bare the 26/11 Mumbai attack plan where claimed he had done Reece of the targets. Later on, U.S. successfully extradited Pakistani-origin businessman and 26/11 Mumbai terror attack co-conspirator Tahawwur Rana to India on April 9, 2025.

Subsequent interrogations laid bare an expansive plot to attack India’s nuclear infrastructure, the National Defence College, and the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark, targeted for printing offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Sworn affidavits from these state-sponsored terrorists conclusively detailed the instrumental roles Major Haroon and Abdul Rahman played in radicalizing and deploying the operatives.

Part 8: The Lahore Ambush (2009)

Major Haroon’s operational reign concluded in February 2009 when security forces apprehended him in Islamabad during an attempt to kidnap Sarwar Khan, an individual belonging to the minority Qadyani sect. Following his arrest, authorities officially indicted Haroon on a multitude of offenses, prominently featuring the targeted killing of Major General Faisal Alvi. The terrorist response to his capture was immediate and spectacular. On March 3, 2009 barely a week post-arrest a heavily armed squad of roughly ten terrorists intercepted a convoy transporting the Sri Lankan national cricket team through the streets of Lahore. The execution of the ambush strongly suggested a kidnapping plot rather than an assassination mission, as the gunmen focused their lethal fire entirely on the police escort, killing six officers. With the security detail neutralized or scattered, the attackers moved to commandeer the team bus. A devastating hostage crisis was averted solely due to the exceptional composure of the bus driver, who accelerated through the kill zone, though an assistant coach and seven athletes sustained injuries during the barrage. Intelligence assessments from the ISI later confirmed the assault was executed by cadres directly trained by Haroon, who intended to hold the international athletes hostage to extort their commander’s release.

Part 9: The Ghazwa-e-Hind Doctrine

Following his release from a secondary stint in ISI custody in 2005, Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri the formidable operational chief of Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI) determined that relentless American coercion had permanently degraded the Pakistan Army’s ability to dominate the region strategically. By the middle of 2006, Kashmiri had synthesized a lethal coalition comprising his own elite 313 Brigade (veterans of ISI training camps), former LeT commanders, and retired military officers. His ideological trajectory was heavily sculpted by Al-Qaeda elites, namely Sheikh Essa, Abu Waleed Ansari, and Mustafa Abu al-Yazid.

In late 2007, Kashmiri unveiled a sprawling terrorist architecture that stunned even Al-Qaeda’s supreme command. His thesis operationalized the “End of Times” eschatological war in the East a theoretical concept Al-Qaeda had envisioned but lacked the logistical capability to execute. Kashmiri positioned India as the focal point of this holy war. He sought to integrate marginalized, ISI-fostered jihadist networks in India into Al-Qaeda’s broader global agenda, aiming to establish a permanent, grinding theatre of conflict. Exploiting legacy HuJI networks in Bangladesh and southern India, Kashmiri aggressively pushed his underground cells into Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. The apex of this strategy was the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attack, a labyrinthine plot orchestrated by Kashmiri and facilitated by ex-military officers who used LeT and a forward operating section of the ISI.

While US diplomacy successfully aborted the intended India-Pakistan war following Mumbai attack, Kashmiri’s network immediately began preparing a more devastating sequel aimed at Indian nuclear sites and the National Defence College a plot narrowly foiled by the arrests of David Headley and local cells. The overarching vision of Ghazwa-e-Hind (the Battle of End Times in India) remained a dormant but potent objective. Ayman al-Zawahiri was highly enthusiastic about Kashmiri’s blueprint. When the 313 Brigade successfully bombed Pune in 2010, Zawahiri initially drafted a video taking credit, but Al-Qaeda ultimately decided the attack lacked the necessary magnitude to serve as their grand announcement in the Indian theatre. In reality, Al-Qaeda was simply weaponizing a massive 30-year-old proxy war template originally designed by the ISI, HuJI, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Jamaat-e-Islami to combat the Soviets. Al-Qaeda updated this architecture, preparing the Khurasan and Ghazwa-e-Hind battlefields to secure eastern dominance before marching their armies toward the Middle East for an apocalyptic clash with the West. Thus if the Americans think they can use Pakistan as a containment tool for India hoping it will not come back to bite them then they are living in fool’s paradise. America’s blinkered strategy of enabling Pakistan will once again cost them heavily.

Part 10: The Architecture of Nuclear Proliferation

The genesis of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is a definitive study in covert proliferation, facilitated by global negligence, geopolitical convenience, and sophisticated espionage. The program was initiated out of existential dread regarding India’s military superiority, formally commencing when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assembled scientists in Multan in 1972. Demonstrating an absolute commitment to national survival, Bhutto famously declared that Pakistan would acquire a nuclear deterrent “even if we have to eat grass,” explicitly rejecting the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan emerged as the scientific vanguard of this ambition. Employed as a metallurgist at the European URENCO consortium in the 1970s, Khan successfully exfiltrated critical intelligence regarding supplier networks and centrifuge schematics. Upon returning home, he founded the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), establishing the infrastructure for weapons-grade uranium enrichment. Despite explicit warnings from British intelligence, German and Dutch authorities failed to intercept Khan, paralyzed by lax export controls and diplomatic hesitation a systemic failure that birthed Pakistan’s atomic program.

The geopolitical environment of the 1980s further shielded Islamabad. Because Pakistan was an indispensable frontline partner against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Washington repeatedly turned a blind eye to its nuclear advancements. To maintain the flow of anti-Soviet aid, multiple US administrations circumvented the Symington and Pressler amendments, granting Islamabad the unhindered time and capital required to mature its nuclear capabilities. However, Beijing provided the most substantial technical intervention. China supplied highly enriched uranium (HEU), warhead schematics, and facilitated nuclear miniaturization and joint testing. Furthermore, China bolstered Pakistan’s delivery mechanisms, providing the Shaheen and M-11 missile systems. The proliferation network expanded further when North Korea engaged in a barter system, exchanging Nodong missile technology (rebranded by Pakistan as the Ghauri) for AQ Khan’s centrifuge expertise. Financially, the project was heavily subsidized by Gulf states, predominantly Saudi Arabia. King Faisal was a foundational patron of the “Islamic bomb,” funnelling massive liquidity disguised as development aid to sustain the financially draining endeavour when Western funds fluctuated. Riyadh maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity, financing Pakistan’s program while preserving the option for future nuclear sharing, unlike Libya’s overt pursuit.

By the late 1980s, Pakistan validated its bomb designs via clandestine cold tests in the Kirana Hills of Sargodha. The program transitioned from covert to overt on May 28, 1998, when Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices in the Chagai mountains of Balochistan, a direct response to India’s Pokhran-II tests earlier in May 1998. This cemented Pakistan as the seventh global nuclear power and the sole Islamic nation with nuclear capabilities. Nevertheless, this was irrevocably tainted by AQ Khan’s sprawling black market, which illegally exported nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Khan’s subsequent house arrest was largely theatrical, reflecting his status as a national hero and the West’s reluctance to aggressively punish Islamabad during the War on Terror. The journey from Multan to Chagai highlights a stark reality: global non-proliferation norms are consistently superseded by the realpolitik of major world powers

Part 11: General Kayani’s Diplomacy and the Drone War

The December 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto obliterated the American blueprint for a stabilize Pakistan. Power defaulted to her widower, Asif Ali Zardari a leader Washington viewed as a highly flawed, corruption-prone compromise, tethered only symbolically to Bhutto’s pro-Western vision. With the civilian government inherently weak, the military re-established its absolute authority. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the new Chief of Army Staff, became the undisputed power broker. Abandoning Musharraf’s overt authoritarianism, Kayani utilized calculated diplomacy to extract trust from Washington, while simultaneously entrenching the military’s policy of managing and manipulating terrorist proxies.

Concurrent with this political shift was the late 2007 emergence of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), spearheaded by Baitullah Mehsud. Coalescing over 40 Islamist factions in the tribal areas, the TTP morphed from a localized grievance into a sweeping insurgency dedicated to toppling the state and enforcing strict Sharia. While ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP’s violence was directed entirely inward, fuelled by resentment over the military’s post-9/11 cooperation with America. From their Waziristan strongholds, the TTP launched devastating strikes that laid bare Pakistan’s domestic vulnerability, including the brutal 2014 APS Peshawar school massacre, the siege on military headquarters (GHQ), and countless suicide attacks.

In Washington, the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 heralded a new strategic framework. The “Af-Pak” doctrine recognized Pakistan not merely as a partner, but as the operational sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban. Pivot away from mass troop deployments, the Obama administration leaned heavily into covert warfare, drastically expanding CIA drone strikes and intelligence operations inside Pakistani territory. Kayani masterfully played both sides; he publicly endorsed counterterrorism partnerships while his forces selectively targeted only anti-state Pakistani terrorists (like the TTP), systematically shielding Afghan proxies like the Haqqani Network for future regional leverage. Through the Kerry–Lugar–Berman act, the US flooded Pakistan with billions intended to bolster civilian democracy, but these funds ultimately reinforced military hegemony, allowing Kayani to repair the army’s public image post-Musharraf. Operations in South Waziristan and Swat were aggressively marketed as counterterrorism victories, yet they were carefully designed to preserve the specific terrorist factions Rawalpindi viewed as strategic assets.

As US operations escalated, the facade of cooperation crumbled. On-the-ground intelligence and diplomatic leaks repeatedly exposed the ISI’s duplicity aiding US strikes against Al-Qaeda while protecting Afghan insurgent leaders. This clandestine war exploded into public view during the 2011 Raymond Davis incident in Lahore, highlighting the severe intelligence friction between the two nations. To decimate terrorist leadership, Obama pushed drone warfare to record highs between 2010 and 2011. The resulting civilian casualties generated massive anti-American outrage, a sentiment Kayani cynically exploited by publicly condemning the violation of sovereignty while covertly authorizing the strikes. The alliance suffered a fatal fracture in May 2011 when US forces executed a raid to capture Al Qaeda head & main culprit of 9/11 Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, mere steps from Pakistan’s elite military academy. By intentionally excluding Pakistan from the operation, America confirmed its absolute lack of trust, publicly humiliating Islamabad and exposing the enduring reality of its double game.

Part 12: Sovereignty and Siege (2008–2013)

Asif Ali Zardari’s inauguration in 2008 initiated a highly unstable civilian administration operating entirely under the sufferance of a military intelligence apparatus that never recognized his legitimacy. He inherited an economy in freefall, a fractured political landscape, and a metastasizing extremist threat. For the United States, Zardari’s Pakistan presented an unsolvable dilemma: a nominal ally in the War on Terror that simultaneously functioned as a hostile battleground of competing agendas. During his early presidency, militancy surged aggressively in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Exploiting the power vacuum left by Musharraf, the TTP established harsh dominion over Waziristan and the Swat Valley, while displaced Al-Qaeda operatives entrenched themselves in the frontier. As American drone strikes escalated frequently with secret approval from the Zardari administration domestic anti-American hatred skyrocketed, steadily eroding the president’s political survival.

Zardari’s presidency faced its most severe crisis during the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. A ten-man death squad from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) a terror group incubated by the ISI executed a 60-hour massacre in India’s financial capital, killing 166 people. The undeniable link between the attackers and Pakistani state proxies shocked the global community. The operational leaders, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, moved freely within Pakistan, protected by institutional complicity. Zardari was paralyzed by the fallout as India mobilized for potential strikes and demanded justice, the civilian government was trapped between urgent Western demands for accountability and the military’s absolute refusal to admit fault or dismantle its jihadist assets. When Zardari attempted to defuse tensions by suggesting Pakistan might adopt a no first use nuclear doctrine, the military immediately and publicly countermanded him, harshly reminding the world that the president was merely a figurehead in Rawalpindi’s domain.

State cohesion continued to unravel over the following years. It was only after a horrifying video of the Taliban flogging a woman went viral that public pressure forced the military to launch Operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat in 2009. Zardari’s administration was left to manage the catastrophic fallout of millions of internally displaced civilians, while the military successfully rebranded itself as the nation’s saviour. The ultimate humiliation occurred in May 2011, when US Navy SEALs eliminated Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, practically adjacent to the Pakistan Military Academy. While the global community condemned the military establishment, the domestic population inexplicably directed their fury at Zardari for failing to protect Pakistani sovereignty, despite his total lack of prior knowledge regarding the raid. By the conclusion of his term in 2013, Zardari’s tenure was defined by its limitations: blocked from asserting civilian control over foreign policy or the ISI, he presided over a nation crippled by terror, isolated from India, and utterly reliant on foreign aid to survive.

13. Soft Coups and Collapsing Alliances (2009–2013)

By 2009, the democratic facade of Pakistan had thinned considerably, with genuine executive power quietly migrating from President Zardari back to General Kayani. Kayani orchestrated a resurgence of military supremacy without resorting to martial law, systematically reclaiming absolute authority over national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. The toxicity between Rawalpindi and Washington was glaringly exposed in early 2011 during the Raymond Davis incident. Davis, a CIA operative, killed two men in Lahore, citing self-defence. The resulting diplomatic crisis saw the US demanding diplomatic immunity while the ISI seized the opportunity to uncover the depth of unilateral CIA operations in Pakistan. Although Davis was eventually released through a Sharia-compliant blood money (diyat) payment, the debacle severely exacerbated domestic anti-Americanism and highlighted the total communication breakdown between the Zardari government, the CIA, and the ISI.

This controversy was immediately overshadowed by the catastrophic May 2, 2011 Abbottabad raid. The discovery and execution of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALs just 800 meters from the Kakul Military Academy humiliated Pakistan internationally. The Obama administration viewed the revelation as absolute proof of Pakistani treachery, while Zardari suffered immense political damage. Panicked by the exposure, the military deflected accountability by whipping up domestic hysteria over the American violation of national sovereignty. The raid fundamentally destroyed the bilateral relationship. The Pentagon slashed funding, Congress attached severe restrictions to future aid, and joint intelligence operations ceased. As US drone warfare against the Haqqani Network and Al-Qaeda intensified in Waziristan, the Pakistani political elite grew increasingly hostile. Despite the pressure, Kayani’s military refused to abandon its extremist proxies, preserving them to counter India and control post-NATO Afghanistan.

The alliance hit rock bottom in November 2011 with the Salala incident, where NATO aircraft erroneously killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. In retaliation, Pakistan severed the critical NATO supply lines to Afghanistan for seven months. With military encouragement, right-wing religious factions staged massive nationwide protests. This weaponized anti-Americanism served to distract from the army’s recent humiliations and simultaneously undermine Zardari’s government, painting it as a subservient US puppet. Throughout this chaos, Kayani expanded his dominion over the media, intelligence sectors, and the judiciary. Under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, the Supreme Court launched a wave of judicial activism aimed squarely at the civilian administration, culminating in the NRO investigations and the 2012 dismissal of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. By 2013, Kayani had perfected the hybrid state model: leveraging judicial pressure, media manipulation, and Islamist alliances to maintain absolute military dominance behind a civilian curtain.

Part 14: The Engineering of Imran Khan

Having successfully marginalized the Zardari administration, Pakistan’s military leadership recognized the need for a new political instrument. Because overt military rule was unpalatable following the Musharraf era, the generals required a civilian proxy who could harness public outrage, legitimize the state’s anti-Western narrative, and dismantle the established political dynasties while remaining entirely subservient to GHQ. They found their perfect candidate in Imran Khan, a former cricket star whose outsider status and populist appeal were meticulously weaponized by the deep state.

Although Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had been founded in 1996, it languished in obscurity until General Kayani’s strategic pivot in 2011. Seeking to restore the military’s prestige after the Abbottabad embarrassment, the intelligence apparatus began aggressively promoting Khan as an untainted saviour, contrasting him against the deeply entrenched corruption of the PML-N and PPP. Khan’s rhetoric heavy on Islamic nationalism, anti-drone sentiment, and calls for withdrawal from the US war perfectly captured the mood of a populace traumatized by terrorism and economic hardship. Following the 26/11 fallout and the drone campaigns, Khan’s demands for justice and sovereignty dovetailed flawlessly with the army’s strategy of blaming domestic failures on corrupt politicians, India, and the United States.

The ISI heavily subsidized Khan’s political ascent through the rapidly expanding electronic media landscape. Retired generals, television personalities, and social media influencers were mobilized to champion Khan as the ultimate patriot. By late 2011, culminating in a massive rally in Lahore, Khan’s events were highly coordinated spectacles, allegedly facilitated by key institutional figures like former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha, who provided security clearances and logistical backing. The rallying cry of “Naya Pakistan” (New Pakistan) was a calculated operation to destroy the traditional two-party system. The strategy hit critical mass in 2016 during the Panama Papers scandal, which implicated Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Khan led massive sit-ins (dharna) in Islamabad demanding Sharif’s ouster protests that were highly synchronized with the judiciary’s aggressive posturing. This culminated in the Supreme Court disqualifying Sharif in 2017 for dishonesty, effectively decapitating the PML-N. Throughout this engineered crisis, the military maintained a veneer of neutrality while the ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) amplified Khan’s narratives of Islamic revivalism and anti-corruption. In July 2018, following an election marred by heavy media censorship, judicial targeting of opponents, and pre-poll rigging, Imran Khan was installed as Prime Minister, successfully completing the army’s civil-military realignment.

Part 15: The Collapse of the Hybrid Experiment (2018–2022)

Imran Khan’s inauguration in August 2018 represented the zenith of the military’s attempt to govern through a controllable populist proxy. While heralded as Naya Pakistan, the government was a textbook hybrid regime: Khan provided the fiery, moralistic public relations, while the army dictated foreign policy and the ISI managed domestic politics. However, the contradictions of this arrangement ensured its rapid demise. Khan’s administration inherited a catastrophic economic situation crushing debt, a plunging currency, and massive deficits. His populist refusal to implement necessary structural reforms eventually forced a desperate $6 billion IMF bailout in 2019. Concurrently, the flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) ground to a halt as Beijing lost confidence in Pakistan’s security and political cohesion. Khan further alienated critical allies by aligning with Qatar, Malaysia, and Turkey in a bid for Islamic leadership, deeply offending Saudi Arabia, which promptly suspended crucial oil credit lines and worsened Pakistan’s fiscal agony.

Khan weaponized foreign policy for domestic applause, frequently engaging in vitriolic anti-American rhetoric. He routinely accused the US of exploiting and discarding Pakistan, ignoring the billions in aid his military backers had previously absorbed. This ideological posturing peaked in August 2021 when he publicly celebrated the Taliban’s capture of Kabul as “breaking the shackles of slavery,” a statement that horrified the West but cemented his alignment with the Islamist deep state. Yet, the civil-military alliance was fatally fracturing behind the scenes. General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Kayani’s successor, grew increasingly intolerant of Khan’s erratic governance. The defining rupture occurred over the appointment of the ISI chief; Khan’s attempt to retain his loyalist, Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, was viewed by Bajwa as an intolerable assault on military hierarchy.

Furthermore, their strategic visions diverged sharply. General Bajwa desired a diplomatic reset with India and the United States, an initiative Khan and his ISI faction actively sabotaged, particularly in the inflamed aftermath of the 2019 Pulwama attack and India’s retaliatory Balakot airstrikes. By 2021, the domestic situation was dire as inflation breached 12%, industries collapsed from energy shortages, and foreign reserves vanished. Khan’s refusal to enact IMF-mandated price hikes out of populist vanity accelerated the economic ruin. His relentless persecution of political opponents via the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and his weaponization of religious rhetoric alienated the entire political spectrum. Viewing him as a dangerous and defiant liability a sentiment allegedly shared by US official Donald Lu the military abruptly withdrew its patronage, triggering the collapse of the hybrid regime.

Part 16: The May 9th Mutiny and Military Retribution (2022–2024)

The parliamentary removal of Imran Khan in April 2022 violently shattered the hybrid regime model. Stripped of power, the military’s former protégé immediately transformed into its most dangerous enemy. A coalition government led by Shehbaz Sharif uniting the historically opposed PML-N and PPP took office, but functioned entirely under the shadow of the GHQ. Refusing to accept his dismissal, Khan launched an explosive nationwide campaign, accusing the domestic elite, the Pakistan Army, and the United States of conspiring to overthrow him. His potent cocktail of Islamist rhetoric, hyper-nationalism, and perceived victimization electrified the urban middle class and youth, who elevated Khan into a symbol of absolute resistance against military hegemony.

As Khan’s massive rallies engulfed Peshawar, Karachi, and Lahore, his rhetoric against the military leadership grew unprecedentedly hostile. General Asim Munir, the new Army Chief who had previously clashed with Khan during a brief stint as ISI head in 2019, viewed this populist uprising as an existential threat to the institution. The crisis detonated on May 9, 2023, when paramilitary Rangers forcibly arrested Khan inside the Islamabad High Court on corruption charges related to the Al-Qadir Trust. The resulting backlash was historic. Enraged PTI mobs directly assaulted military symbols, breaching the GHQ in Rawalpindi and torching the Corps Commander’s residence in Lahore. Protesters openly chanted against Generals at the GHQ, shattering the long-standing taboo against criticizing the armed forces.

The military’s retaliation was swift and draconian. Within days, over 10,000 PTI supporters were incarcerated. Bypassing civilian due process, the state utilized the Official Secrets Act and the Army Act to prosecute civilians in opaque military tribunals. The crackdown featured intense media censorship, social media blackouts, and the systematic dismantling of the PTI’s provincial infrastructure through mass arrests and coerced defections. Khan was buried under an avalanche of legal charges, ranging from terrorism to contempt, strategically designed to permanently disqualify him from politics. By the end of 2024, the Shehbaz Sharif government operated merely as an administrative front for a de facto military dictatorship. The ISI exerted total control over the judiciary, politics, and media, while military-run corporations monopolized the failing economy. Although imprisoned, Khan’s massive popularity represented a simmering insurgency against the state. The military found itself desperately fighting the very forces of populist anger and religious nationalism it had spent years cultivating.

Part 17: Resource Diplomacy and Geopolitical Relevance (2025)

By 2025, General Asim Munir had consolidated absolute control over Pakistan, reducing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to a mere diplomatic figurehead for a military-run state. Following the severe domestic suppression of 2023 and 2024, Munir prioritized salvaging Pakistan’s catastrophic economy by repairing ties with Saudi Arabia and the United States. Strangled by 25% inflation, vanishing foreign reserves, and punishing IMF terms, the military establishment offered major strategic concessions to regain Western patronage. With Donald Trump returning to the US presidency, Islamabad aggressively marketed itself as an indispensable intelligence and logistical asset for managing Central and South Asia.

To secure this geopolitical lifeline, Munir opened Pakistan’s strategic assets to foreign capital, specifically targeting the vast, unexploited rare earth, gold, and copper reserves in Balochistan. Bypassing the civilian parliament entirely, the military established the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), chaired by Munir, to fast-track Gulf and US investments. Highly opaque mining contracts were awarded to US-linked consortiums, brokered directly through military conglomerates like the Army Welfare Trust and the Fauji Foundation, ensuring the financial windfall bypassed the state treasury and flowed directly to the military. Washington, eager to break China’s monopoly on critical minerals and contain the Iran-Russia-China axis, eagerly embraced this resource diplomacy, perfectly willing to stabilize an authoritarian regime in exchange for rare earth access.

Simultaneously, the regime explored unorthodox digital finance to bypass IMF oversight, attempting to launch a state-backed stablecoin linked to the Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial (WLF-1) network to capture Gulf liquidity. However, the military’s aura of invincibility was abruptly shattered on May 10, 2025, during “Operation Sindoor,” when Indian precision airstrikes decimated several Pakistani airbases, comprehensively exposing the limitations of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence. Despite the global consensus that Pakistan remains a primary incubator of terrorism, the renewed alliance with Washington highlights a grim historical cycle. Whenever facing collapse, the Pakistani deep state successfully commodifies its strategic geography and inherent duplicity previously utilized against the Soviets and during the War on Terror, and currently deployed against the emerging Eurasian axis.

Part 18: The Implosion of the 5D Chessboard

Modern Pakistan is currently navigating a catastrophic, multidimensional implosion, where decades of proxy warfare and internal manipulation have finally turned against the state. The peripheral territories are rapidly slipping from Islamabad’s grasp. In Sindh, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) demonstrated its expanding operational reach by attacking the Jafar Express, indicating that what started as a regional resource grievance has metastasized into an active rebellion against the Punjabi-centric military establishment. Concurrently, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has violently resurrected its insurgency in the former FATA territories, launching devastating strikes against state security infrastructure. Compounding this internal collapse is the total failure of Pakistan’s Afghan strategy. The Afghan Taliban, once nurtured by the ISI as a strategic asset, has evolved into a hostile neighbour. Viewing Pakistan as an occupier of Pashtun lands rather than a patron, the Taliban have engaged in fierce border clashes along the Durand Line, resulting in the deaths of 58 Pakistani soldiers. These skirmishes have choked trade and inflamed regional animosities.

Further relationship between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has shifted to use it as proxy against Afghan Taliban. While Pakistan initially combated ISKP networks within its own urban centers, mounting evidence suggests that the ISI has leveraged the terror group to project power and counter regional adversaries like the Afghan government. Former ISKP fighters and Afghan intelligence sources have openly claimed that the Pakistani military supplied them with weapons and safe havens, explicitly instructing them to target Afghan national forces. Following border clashes between Islamabad and Kabul in 2016, the ISI’s interest in utilizing ISKP as a strategic tool intensified; they allegedly offered logistical support on the condition that ISKP focus its violence entirely within Afghanistan rather than on Pakistani soil.

To solidify its influence over the group’s operations, the ISI systematically infiltrated ISKP by encouraging defections from trusted state-backed proxies like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Haqqani network into ISKP’s ranks. This patient infiltration strategy seemingly culminated in May 2017 when a former LeT commander with known ties to the ISI was controversially appointed as the governor of Wilayat Khorasan. By co-opting ISKP elements, Pakistan’s deep state successfully redirected the group’s brutal insurgency away from its own borders, utilizing the ISKP terrorists to check the Afghan Taliban’s independence and perpetuate a controlled destabilization of the region while maintaining plausible deniability.

Internally, the social fabric of Pakistan is tearing along multiple fault lines. The Barelvi extremist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), routinely paralyzes urban centres with mob violence under the banner of blasphemy laws, openly mocking state authority. The Pakistani military has now banned TLP. Politically, the civil-military war between Imran Khan’s PTI and the Sharif dynasty with General Asim Munir has paralyzed governance, creating an institutional void. Ironically, while the global rush for rare earth minerals should have provided Pakistan with an economic renaissance, the deposits have merely trapped the nation in a new geopolitical crossfire. As the United States seeks to leverage Pakistani minerals to counter Chinese dominance, Islamabad finds itself dangerously caught between competing superpowers, paralyzed by the very extremist and political forces it spent decades cultivating.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the modern trajectory of Pakistan demonstrates a tragic continuity: a state perpetually willing to commodify its strategic geography and inherent duplicity to survive its own self-inflicted crises. Operating under the authoritarian grip of General Asim Munir, Islamabad has once again successfully rebranded itself as a necessary evil for a remarkably hypocritical US foreign policy pivot. Despite Pakistan’s long, documented history of sheltering the very terrorists who fought coalition forces, the returning Trump administration has brazenly rehabilitated the nation’s strategic profile. In a stark display of realpolitik, Washington has elevated Islamabad to serve as a critical mediator in its conflict with Iran, abandoning the moral pretences of the prime sponsorship of Terrorism. Instead, this contemporary alliance is driven by the ruthless pragmatism of resource extraction and high-finance diplomacy. Desperate for geopolitical relevance and economic salvation, Pakistan’s military establishment has opened the vast rare earth and copper wealth of the Reko Diq mines to US-linked consortiums and the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

This transactional statecraft increasingly blurs the lines between national security, corporate profiteering, and unregulated digital finance, notably intersecting with the Trump family’s own World Liberty Financial (WLF) cryptocurrency ventures. Yet, this aggressive outward projection masks a catastrophic internal collapse. The Pakistani state is currently being devoured by the very forces it spent decades cultivating, facing a multi-front implosion driven by Baloch insurgents, a hostile Afghan Taliban, and uncontrollable domestic radicalism. Caught in a perpetual cycle of leveraging its instability for foreign patronage, Pakistan proves that its grand strategy of duplicity has not secured its future, but rather guaranteed its perpetual state of crisis. Pakistan desperate to secure lifelines from IMF, China, Saudi Arabia continues to sell it to highest bidder while double crossing it from behind.

Once again in a stark demonstration of its enduring geopolitical duplicity, Pakistan has effectively undermined the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign and naval blockade against Tehran by formally activating a massive overland sanctions-evasion network. Spearheaded by the military establishment under General Asim Munir a figure heavily courted by the current US administration Pakistan has opened six major land corridors to funnel cargo directly from Iran.

The officially notified transit routes bypassing the blockade are:

• Gwadar–Gabd

• Karachi/Port Qasim–Lyari–Ormara–Pasni–Gabd

• Karachi/Port Qasim–Khuzdar–Dalbandin–Taftan

• Gwadar–Turbat–Hoshab–Panjgur–Nagg–Besima–Khuzdar–Quetta/Lakpass–Dalbandin–Nokundi–Taftan

• Gwadar–Lyari–Khuzdar–Quetta/Lakpass–Dalbandin–Nokundi–Taftan

• Karachi/Port Qasim–Gwadar–Gabd

While the reported volume of over 3,000 containers currently in transit originates from Iranian state media warranting a degree of analytical scepticism the strategic reality of these new trade routes is undeniable. This manoeuvre perfectly encapsulates Pakistan’s quintessential double game: actively soliciting Washington’s diplomatic and financial Favour on the global stage, while simultaneously providing a vital, backdoor economic lifeline to one of America’s primary adversaries. The tragedy of the 5D chessboard is not that Pakistan double-crosses its allies, but that the world’s superpowers, lured by the siren song of strategic depth and rare earth riches, continue to return to the table, hoping that this time, the arsonist has truly become the firefighter.

References:

1. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, May 2011, https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745331010/inside-al-qaeda-and-the-taliban/

2. The New Yorker, The Journalist and the Spies: The Murder of Saleem Shahzad, June 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/19/the-journalist-and-the-spies

3. The New York Times, U.S. Concludes Pakistan Intelligence Agency Ordered Killing of Journalist, July 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/world/asia/05pakistan.html

4. BBC News, Saleem Shahzad: The Pakistani journalist who knew too much, May 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18151433

5. Reuters, Pakistan’s Reko Diq mine: A major opportunity for investors, December 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pakistans-reko-diq-mine-major-opportunity-investors-2022-12-15/

6. Al Jazeera, Iran and Pakistan open new border crossing to boost trade, April 2021/Updated 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/21/iran-and-pakistan-open-third-border-crossing-to-boost-trade

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8. The Guardian, The 313 Brigade: How Al-Qaeda’s Shadow Army Infiltrated the Pakistani State, June 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/16/pakistan-313-brigade-al-qaeda

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13. United States Institute of Peace, The Balochistan Insurgency: Regional Implications and Mineral Wealth, July 2024, https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/07/understanding-pakistans-resurgent-baloch-insurgency

14. Reuters, Iran Launches New Rail and Road Links to Pakistan to Circumvent Maritime Blockades, March 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-pakistan-trade-corridors-expand-2026-03-12/

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26. The Siege: The Attack on the Taj - By Adrian Levy, Cathy Scott-Clark, Penguin (2015)

Author’s Note:

The historical framework, operational timelines, and granular details regarding Al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the internal dynamics of the Pakistani military discussed in Part 1 to 9 of this analysis draw heavily on the groundbreaking investigative reporting of the late Syed Saleem Shahzad. His seminal 2011 book, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, remains an indispensable primary source for understanding this era of Pakistan’s double cross and sponsorship of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

On May 29, 2011, Shahzad was kidnapped in Pakistan and found dead two days later; the Obama administration and the CIA later concluded he was targeted by Pakistan’s intelligence services (ISI) for exposing military links to terrorist groups.

The subsequent analysis presented in this article from Part 10 to 18 (Circa 2009-2025) represents an original synthesis, detailing the contemporary hybrid regime, resource diplomacy, and the modern U.S. geopolitical pivot towards Pakistan.