DAWN Editorials 30th August 2026

Steep challenge

AN abundance of good fortune has landed a 46-year-old barrister, Syed Iftikhar Ali Gillani, in the hot seat. He will serve as the 17th prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, having been elected to the post on Friday with 30 votes from his party, the PML-N.

For now, Mr Gillani heads an incomplete legislative assembly, with seven seats representing the Poonch and Sudhnoti districts yet to be filled due to the law-and-order situation in those areas. He made note of that fact in his inaugural speech, hoping that the remainder of the electoral process will be completed soon.

He also promised employment, especially for the youth, recruitment on merit, transparency and anti-corruption measures, improvement in education and healthcare, digitising the economy, and launching a portal to address citizens’ grievances. That makes for a bold, positive start to what is bound to be a challenging assignment. Mr Gillani will remain under constant scrutiny, including from his own party.

The recent general election in AJK has remained marred by controversy. There were frequent and vociferous accusations of impropriety and alleged rigging, including from one of the PML-N’s most important allies at the centre. The AJK Election Commission, too, controversially decided it would declare voting results after each phase of the election, raising serious questions regarding electoral propriety. And then there were the large-scale and often violent protests that disrupted the process, which have yet to be conclusively addressed.

To top it off, Mr Gillani’s candidature for the premiership also drew strong resistance from within his own party. Senior PML-N figures, including the AJK chapter president Shah Ghulam Qadir and former AJK prime minister Raja Farooq Haider, openly and strongly opposed his nomination. Mr Qadir had been considered the leading contender before Mr Gillani’s entry, but the party seems to have had other plans.

Critics also pointed to the fact that Mr Gillani lost the Muzaffarabad-III constituency he had contested in the general election and was only returned to the AJK Legislative Assembly on a reserved technocrat seat. This clashed with the PML-N’s own position on ‘respecting the vote’, as the critics pointed out. Still, it appears that the party’s central leadership insisted on a younger face over the old guard in AJK. Whether that bet pays off remains to be seen.

Mr Gillani will need to prove his doubters wrong while placating those elements in AJK that resisted or boycotted the electoral process. The latter may be the most sensitive aspect of his job, given the criticality of restoring stability in the region. He has been involved in AJK politics at least since 2010, and has previously served in the AJK cabinet. Whether or not those experiences have prepared him adequately for the premiership will soon become evident.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2026

The missing

PAKISTAN has for decades grappled with the problem of missing persons, as powerful actors within the state have been accused of tolerating the practice of enforced disappearances. Due to the sustained activism of those whose loved ones have reportedly been ‘disappeared’, as well as rights groups, the state has at least acknowledged that the problem exists, and formed official bodies to look into the matter. But today, as the world observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the state must pledge to eliminate this unlawful practice and handle suspects within constitutional bounds. At least two bodies have been set up at the federal level, with the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances primarily looking into cases, while a provincial committee formed by the Balochistan High Court is also in operation. Balochistan and KP face the highest number of missing persons, though cases have been reported from other provinces as well. According to the COIED, 8,873 cases were “disposed of” between March 2011, when the commission was formed, and August 2025. Yet independent observers, such as HRCP, say these figures are “vastly underreported”. Moreover, last year the Balochistan Assembly amended the provincial antiterrorism law allowing for detention without charge for up to three months. This can hardly be called a progressive step towards bringing transparency to the issue of missing persons.

There is no doubt that the state continues to face critical law and order challenges, such as insurgencies and terrorism. But these difficulties cannot be tackled by skirting constitutional rights, and creating parallel systems that are beyond public scrutiny. Arguably, when officialdom hauls people away without due process, and without telling their families why and where they are being held, it only adds to the people’s alienation from the state. A confident state relies on the law to prosecute those it believes are involved in wrongdoing. Or if the rulers believe the legal system is broken, they should correct it without compromising fundamental rights. A weak legal system is no excuse for violating rights. If the state believes individuals are involved in wrongdoing, instead of keeping them incommunicado, it must produce them before a court, so that they can defend themselves.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2026

ML-1 funding gap

THAT the government has finally started looking at alternative ways to finance the long-delayed Karachi-Peshawar Main Line-1 railway project after the Chinese funding for the crucial transport scheme failed to materialise is a good sign. But the outcome of Friday’s review of the proposal to construct the 460km Rohri-Multan section — estimated to cost over Rs450bn — shows that our planners have not even finalised the plan let alone secured alternative funding sources. The secretaries of the federal ministries involved sent their juniors to represent them. This means that the bureaucracy does not expect this project to take off anytime soon. It is telling that the committee, headed by the planning minister, declined to clear the FWO’s proposal for being incomplete, and ordered an independent audit of the very costing the organisation had prepared.

Simply put, the government is still assembling basic numbers like construction costs, rolling-stock requirements, revenue potential etc for a railway line it has promoted for the better part of a decade. ML-1 is not an ordinary project; it is the backbone connecting Karachi’s ports to the rest of the country, and its condition determines how much it costs to move goods to and from the port. A faster line would cut freight transit times and lower the logistics burden that currently eats into the competitiveness of our exports. It would also mean safer and more comfortable passenger travel on a network where the deteriorating track has been linked to accidents, as the committee itself was briefed. Every year ML-1 stays unbuilt, Pakistan pays more to trade and asks its citizens to travel on tracks its own officials call unsafe. What the meeting confirms is that Beijing’s promised financing for the project is no longer forthcoming. For years, the promised investment was pitched as the backbone of ML-1. Now the government is struggling to fill the gap. Whether it can do so remains to be seen.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2026