Daily Times Editorials 12th August 2026

Owning the Promise

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif used National Minorities Day to renew an old promise: that faith should not determine a Pakistani citizen’s worth before the state. With the speeches delivered, however, the more difficult task is to give that promise meaning in everyday dealings between citizens and the state.

There is good reason to return to Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s August 11 address, but not simply because another anniversary has passed. A Pakistani, in his eyes, was to be a citizen “first, second, and last”, carrying equal rights and obligations regardless of creed. The responsibility rested with the state to deal with its citizens without grading their political worth according to religion.

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Before his assassination in 2011, Pakistan’s first Christian Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti had helped persuade the government to designate August 11 as National Minorities Day, pushed through the five per cent quota for minorities in federal employment and helped secure four non-Muslim seats in the Senate. Over fifteen years after his death, these measures remain part of Pakistan’s institutional architecture. Their uneven implementation is, nevertheless, the unfinished part of his legacy. Minority representatives still complain that quota positions go unfilled and that non-Muslim recruits remain disproportionately concentrated in lower-grade jobs.Geographic Reference

Another development deserves greater attention in the minority-rights debate. The Pakistani state has lately demonstrated that religious agitators and blasphemy vigilantes need not be allowed to dictate terms from the street. The ban imposed on Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan was followed by arrests of its leaders, the sealing of mosques and the freezing of bank accounts.

Resultantly, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, only 13 blasphemy cases were registered so far this year–roughly two-thirds fewer than before. Data supplied by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project show only one blasphemy-related riot or attack over the past 12 months, compared with an annual average of more than seven between 2021 and 2024.

For years, religious vigilantism was treated almost as a force of nature: dangerous, regrettable and too combustible for the state to confront decisively. Recent experience suggests otherwise. When the government, police and security establishment deny inciters organisational space, the temperature can fall. Recently in Karachi, police faced down hundreds gathered over an allegation against a Christian family, removed the family to safety and later found the accusation to be false.

The same administrative seriousness is also required in the case of allegations of forced conversion involving young Hindu and Christian girls. Reserved parliamentary seats may guarantee presence, but minority activists have a legitimate argument when they say representatives selected through party lists can become more answerable to party leaderships than to the communities they nominally represent. None of this requires Pakistan to dilute its Islamic identity. The founding father only demanded confidence in that identity: enough confidence to ensure that a Christian, Hindu, Sikh or any other citizen does not need a patron or an annual observance to establish their claim on the state. *

Threats and Talks

The diplomacy around Iran made another set of headlines on Tuesday when Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said signals from the previous two or three days suggested Washington and Tehran were close to “some sort” of arrangement. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi landed in Tehran for the sixth time in the last six months for talks with Iranian officials amid mediation efforts.

As if to dampen growing hopes, US President Donald Trump offered his own strategic menu: let Iran fail economically or hit it “really, really hard.” A day earlier, he had demanded compensation from Tehran for damages to “the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.” Such contradictions have become more consequential than presidential theatrics.

Iran continues to make reopening Hormuz conditional on sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, an end to military threats and other concessions broadly resembling provisions discussed under the June understanding. Washington, meanwhile, maintains its blockade while seeking unhindered navigation through a waterway that normally carries roughly a fifth of global oil and LNG. Tehran’s use of maritime disruption as leverage deserves no romantic interpretation as attacks on commercial shipping have widened the economic battlefield and imposed costs far beyond the combatants. Yet months of American firepower, including another intensive campaign in July, have still failed to wrest control of the Strait from Iran.

That leaves both capitals confronting the limits of coercion. Iran can hurt regional economies and global energy markets, though prolonged closure also deepens its own isolation and economic pain. America can destroy another military site, tighten sanctions or hit another piece of infrastructure, but the political return from each additional strike has steadily diminished. A recent US poll put approval of Mr Trump’s handling of the war at just 28 per cent while 58 per cent expected gasoline prices to worsen. Eighteen American service members have been killed, and concerns persist over depleted stocks of precision long-range missiles.

The regional response is therefore worth watching more closely than another Truth Social broadside. Qatar’s latest assessment that the Hormuz talks are at an advanced stage matters because Doha, Muscat and Islamabad now appear to be working different parts of the same diplomatic puzzle.

There is still plenty that can go wrong. Four sailors were reported killed on Tuesday in an alleged Houthi attack in the Bab el-Mandeb. Every fresh missile adds another complication to fragile negotiations already carrying the weight of Hormuz, sanctions and Iran’s nuclear future.

Washington now needs steadiness more than another ultimatum. Tehran, too, will have to decide how much leverage it can extract before coercion begins consuming its diplomatic gains.

The mediators can keep carrying messages, narrowing differences and even keeping doors open. Yet, they cannot manufacture the political decision that still has to be made in Washington and Tehran. *