DAWN Editorials 5th September 2026

Bond revival

PAKISTAN has raised a record $3bn in its single largest international capital market transaction through a dual-tranche Eurobond sale that drew nearly $6bn in total orders.

When international investors offer to lend a country almost twice what it is asking for and are willing to do so for as long as 10 years, they are betting that Pakistan will still be solvent, still servicing its debt, and still worth holding paper on a decade from now. That bet placed by a widespread group of institutional buyers gives yet another positive spin to the economic revival story told by the government.

Two years after the country was on the verge of default, that is no mean achievement. Some practical gains from this stand out: a boost to reserves, a fresh pricing benchmark, and less reliance on bilateral rollovers. Locking in money for 5.5 and 10 years, rather than the shorter rollovers that have dominated Pakistan’s external financing in recent years, pushes out the point at which this debt has to be refinanced. Following recent rating upgrades, this is the kind of market validation the country needed.

None of that should be mistaken for cheap money, though. The coupon rates — almost equal to returns the government is paying on Roshan Digital deposits — are real, high rates in a hard currency Pakistan cannot print and is struggling to earn. For context, when Islamabad last issued dollar bonds in 2021, it borrowed five-year money at 5.875pc and 10-year money at 7.375pc. In other words, this deal costs more than the last comparable one did. Part of that gap can be attributed to international factors: global dollar rates have stayed higher for longer since the Fed’s tightening cycle, so every sovereign borrower, not just Pakistan, is paying more than it would have three or four years ago.

But part of it is also Pakistan-specific. Investors are still charging a risk premium that an investment-grade country would not pay. That does not mean Pakistan has borrowed badly. It is just that the current ratings can only do so much in the prevailing market.

Comparing Eurobond coupons across countries can be tricky because a rate that looks high for one issuer can be a bargain for another, once credit rating, tenor and the global rate environment are accounted for. Judged against peers of similar credit standing, Pakistan’s pricing sits towards the upper end of the range, which aligns with where the rating agencies currently place it: not investment grade, but no longer treated as a basket case either.

The more useful test of this deal will come later: whether Pakistan can return to the market in a year or two and borrow at a lower cost than it did with this issue will be the real test. It will determine if the confidence on display is durable.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2026

Data theft

AT least the government is not trying to cover it up. That, perhaps, is the only silver lining in the alarming scandal that has just come to light. We know now, straight from the horse’s mouth, that the fingerprint-based biometric verification system — supposedly built to protect citizens’ digital identities — has been thoroughly compromised. The minister of state for interior now casually dismisses it as “outdated”. Scammers have reportedly enjoyed access to supposedly secure locations, such as airports, driving licence centres, passport offices, and possibly even Nadra, to physically steal citizens’ fingerprint data. And the crisis goes deeper. In a recent meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Interior, state officials admitted that scammers continue to operate with impunity despite the blocking of 18.2m illegal SIM cards over the past two and a half years. By blaming “loopholes” in the SIM issuance system and banking channels for giving criminals free rein to commit financial fraud, the state has admitted to a massive breach of public trust. No wonder citizens simply do not trust the authorities to guarantee their safety. It must be asked: what have the authorities been doing? Given the scale of the crisis, one would expect dedicated, multi-agency taskforces to be actively dismantling these fraudulent networks. Instead, it appears the relevant regulators — the State Bank, the PTA, the National Cybercrime Investigation Authority, and Nadra — have been operating in their own silos.

Now that a stakeholder committee has finally been directed to formulate practical legislative and technical measures, the outcome must be a centralised cybersecurity framework. Pakistan and its citizenry cannot afford another bureaucratic talking shop that hums and haws while yet another crisis continues to metastasise. Further, the authorities’ sudden push to collect even more intrusive personal identification data, such as facial and iris scans, must be met with severe scrutiny from legislators. They must demand detailed assurances on exactly how this new data will be secured to ensure that the glaring mistakes of the past are not repeated. There must also be consequences for the breaches that have already occurred. Before the state’s requests for more resources to “strengthen the system” can be taken seriously, those responsible for the existing negligence must be held accountable for the financial losses already incurred by the citizenry. Anything less glosses over the scale of the negligence.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2026

‘Cleansing’ Gaza

THE Israeli defence minister has recently confirmed what many across the world already know: the Zionist state seeks to ethnically cleanse the occupied territories of their native Palestinian inhabitants. Tel Aviv seeks to achieve this reprehensible aim through murder — as witnessed in the Gaza genocide — as well as forced displacement in order to quench its insatiable thirst for other people’s land. Israel Katz has said his country is ready to depopulate Gaza and only awaits America’s green light. Israel is prepared to “get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible”, he said, contemptuously referring to Gaza’s people as if they were livestock to be transported from one place to another. He added there was “no real solution” other than the forcible removal of Gaza’s people. In fact, there very much is a solution: Israel must vacate all occupied Palestinian territory and be made to answer for its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

The situation is not much better in the West Bank. Here, the UN says Israel has forcibly displaced the residents of three refugee camps in the occupied territory. Meanwhile, rabid Jewish settlers have unleashed a reign of terror on the West Bank’s Arab population. It should be remembered that forcible displacement is a war crime, which even the so-called Gaza peace plan prohibits. Since Israel has clearly said that it only awaits America’s blessings to go ahead with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the Trump administration must unambiguously state its opposition to this criminal plan. In fact, those who should leave occupied Palestinian land are the Zionist military and the Israeli settlers who seek to devour Arab territory. The Palestinians have faced one Nakba already, violently forced off the land of their forefathers by outsiders. They must not be made to face another catastrophe executed by the Zionist state, and underwritten by its staunch supporters in Washington.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2026