Express Tribune Editorials 31st July 2026

Beginning to emerge

Pakistan's men's football team will step onto unfamiliar ground later this year when it competes in the inaugural FIFA ASEAN Cup in Indonesia. It may not carry the prestige of the FIFA World Cup or the Asian Cup, but for Pakistan it represents a milestone. For the first time, the men's national side will participate in a FIFA-sanctioned tournament outside the traditional qualification cycle, a milestone that would have seemed improbable only a few years ago.

It is the first tangible indication that Pakistan is finally beginning to emerge from one of the darkest periods in its sporting history. For years, football in the country was held hostage by factional politics and repeated FIFA suspensions over third-party interference. Administrators fought over offices while players were left without matches. Promising careers stagnated. A generation of footballers spent more time waiting for governance disputes to be resolved than representing their country on the international stage. As a result, Pakistan slipped further behind regional rivals. Rankings fell and sponsors lost interest. Yet the past year has offered reasons for cautious optimism. FIFA's lifting of the latest suspension and the restoration of institutional normalcy suggests that Pakistani football is finally moving in the right direction.

Encouragingly, this invitation comes on the heels of another confidence-boosting achievement. Pakistan recently ended a 74-year wait for a standalone international football title by winning the Diamond Jubilee International Football Tournament in the Maldives. While the tournament itself may not rank among Asia's elite competitions, victories matter for a side that has spent years rebuilding both confidence and credibility. The temptation, however, will be to mistake participation for progress. One tournament cannot compensate for decades of neglect, nor can an invitation conceal the structural deficiencies that continue to plague football domestically.

Karachi killings

Karachi has learnt to live with violence. It knows what it means to live under the shadow of extortion rackets and organised criminal syndicates. That is perhaps the city's greatest tragedy. The alleged abduction, torture and murder of 25-year-old entrepreneur Mir Raza Ali, owner of a dessert chain, and the fatal shooting of retired banker Samiuddin Rehmani inside his Azizabad home within days of each other are a damning indictment of the state's failure to protect its citizens.

For years, Karachiites have been told that the city is safer, that crime is under control and that law enforcement has dismantled major criminal groups. Yet the headlines tell a different story. Authorities have become adept at chasing gunmen after they pull the trigger but far less effective at dismantling the criminal ecosystems that produce them. While individual suspects may occasionally be arrested, the criminal enterprises behind them continue to regenerate because the networks that finance, arm and protect them remain largely intact. That failure demands scrutiny. Such crimes are not committed in the shadows. They require planning, surveillance, logistics and the confidence that those responsible can evade capture. Such confidence does not emerge in a vacuum. It grows when criminal networks no longer fear the consequences of their actions.

Karachi is Pakistan's economic heartbeat. No financial centre can thrive when entrepreneurs fear being kidnapped. Investment follows stability, not uncertainty. Businesses expand where the rule of law is respected, not where organised criminals dictate the limits of public safety. The state's first obligation is to safeguard the lives of its citizens and it must demonstrate that it can break the grip of the mafias that continue to hold the city hostage. Karachi's resilience has been romanticised for far too long now.

Time to de-escalate

Pakistan threw its weight behind diplomacy as it vowed to bring the arch-foes, the US and Iran, back to the table. The Foreign Office on Thursday struck an optimistic note, observing that while the security situation in the Middle East "remains precarious", it has also "rekindled hopes that the prevailing relative calm would consolidate into a durable and fully respected ceasefire and pave the way for dialogue".

This is an appreciated stance towards peacemaking and a manifestation of statesmanship. It comes as an opportunity for the warring sides to immediately work towards de-escalation and ensure that the global supply chain is not disrupted. This madness of warmongering from both Washington and Iran in pursuit of settling scores on the battlefield is fraught with serious consequences, plunging the region and beyond into assured destruction. The scale of hostilities in the last few days is quite worrisome. IRGC has raised the stakes by threatening to attack each and every US ally in the region over sorties being flown by American bombers on its oil-rich enclaves, particularly Qeshm Island. The Iranian attack on the Al-Azraq air base in Jordan, which reportedly led to the destruction of many F-35 fighter jets, is another case in point. The skirmishes emanating from pro-Iranian militia inside Iraq and the US retaliation has simply broadened the mosaic of warfare. Further crippling the situation is the brinkmanship of the Houthis in the Red Sea along with persistent insecurity prevailing in Kuwait and Bahrain. This surge in gunfire is not serving any purpose and must be addressed in all sincerity.

The silver lining, nonetheless, are the talks underway between Oman and Iran over the future of the Strait of Hormuz. This has led to a drop in oil prices as Brent has fallen $1.42 a barrel after hitting a high of $93.31. Likewise, China's input that it is not shipping shoulder-fired air-defence missiles to Iran is a sign of maturity at a time when a 'free for all' seems to be the order of the day.