Express Tribune Editorials 11th September 2026

Over to Pyongyang

Pakistan took a leap forward as it reached out to North Korea, expressing its cordiality and warm wishes on the 78th founding anniversary of the republic. This gesture is unusual as the two sides have low-key relations for the last more than two decades. The fact that President Asif Ali Zardari and the Foreign Office simultaneously extended greetings to Pyongyang's leadership seems to be more than a diplomatic courtesy. It has rekindled hopes for a new thaw with the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea at a time when the world is sliding towards multilateralism, and Pakistan has emerged as a net-security provider in the region and beyond. In a letter to President Kim Jong Un, Islamabad expressed the hope that the bilateral ties would continue to grow in the interests of both countries.

There is much to read in this signaling from Islamabad. While Pakistan maintains strategic relations with both China and the US, and has a robust economic orientation with South Korea, tapping on the doors of Pyongyang is a master stroke in networking. Following the establishment of consular relations in 1968 and the initiation of selective defence procurements from Pyongyang, Islamabad maintained a balanced relationship with the communist state. It was due to international sanctions on Pyongyang over its ambitious nuclear and missile programmes that Islamabad had to keep a distance in line with the norms of international law. Yet, there is still a minimal flow of bilateral trade, amounting to roughly $160,000 annually.

It is worth recalling that Pakistan's initial diplomatic outreach peaked when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto made an official visit to Pyongyang in 1993. The trip was reportedly aimed at securing long-range missile technology for Pakistan to counter the regional defence hegemon in its eastern neighborhood. President Zardari's recent initiative is laudable and could yield significant peace dividends. Moving forward, the same spirit of dialogue needs to be extended to Kabul and New Delhi to undo the discrepancies that are currently disrupting geoeconomics in the region.

Dengue - rising thirtyfold

In the wake of a recent study conducted by the Aga Khan University, another entirely preventable public health crisis has joined the ranks of similar preventable diseases taking over Pakistan. According to the report, there has been a staggering 3,000 per cent increase in dengue cases across the country in a single decade - surging from approximately 100,000 in 2012 to an estimated 3.28 million by 2022.

What once used to be a periodic threat owing to the monsoon season has now become a year-round epidemic. All the credit for this extreme setback in disease control goes to a collapsing, impaired and rarely-attended-to waste management and hygiene control system. What's more, every time authorities are questioned on why vectors are breeding unchecked, they release vague statements about the failure of every other institution but theirs.

Sindh, unsurprisingly, carries the heaviest load, with Karachi East reporting the highest estimated incidence. When an entire province is gradually turned into an active wasteland without clean water, functioning sanitation systems, proper garbage dumps and even basic social etiquette on waste disposal, such incidents are bound to occur. Ostensibly, provincial health departments and local municipalities have launched countless anti-dengue campaigns and task forces over the past decade, yet the crisis remains largely unaffected by these flimsy attempts. Dengue breeds in exactly those places that our cities have chosen to ignore.

Officials will continue to point to funding shortfalls, overlapping jurisdictions and systemic issues but this finger-pointing will not fix a very fundamental problem of this country. It goes without saying that elected representatives must ensure basic sanitation for every citizen, regardless of where they live or how much money they can pay for cleaning services. Waste management must be treated as the frontline of public health, before dengue goes on posing a fatal threat to this country's people.

Karachi's lawlessness

A 27-year-old shop employee in Liaquatabad refused to give up his motorcycle keys to two armed robbers on Sunday and was shot in the head for it, in front of a 15-year-old colleague held at gunpoint in the corner of the shop. He is, by local count, the 50th citizen killed this year for resisting a robbery in this city. That milestone was reached with four months still left on the calendar, and it sat alongside two policemen shot in an unrelated robbery the same day and a third officer who died of wounds inflicted a day earlier.

None of this is a stray weekend. Well over 30,000 street crime cases were registered across Karachi in just the first six months of this year. The police themselves have admitted the true number is higher because many victims never bother filing a report. Karachi's police leadership continues to point to comparative statistics showing a decline against last year. But set against tens of thousands of registered incidents and a killing every few days, the improvement being advertised does not match what residents are living through.

Lawlessness of this scale does not sustain itself on its own. It survives on illegal weapons that continue to circulate freely despite periodic crackdowns, and on an incompetent police force stretched thin. It survives on the desperation of a city where unemployment and drug addiction push young men toward armed robbery as a livelihood, and on a criminal justice system that fails to punish them even when they are caught. The Sindh government and Karachi police owe the public an honest account of why lawlessness of this scale persists despite the resources and operations they claim credit for.