Express Tribune Editorials 4th August 2026

No ground to concede

Seventeen dead, more than twenty wounded, an entire district placed under emergency - this is the arithmetic of Sunday's suicide bombing outside a police station in Kabal tehsil of Swat. Six policemen were among the martyred. Malakand's deputy inspector general has attributed the attack to Fitna al Khawarij, the outlawed TTP in other words. Preliminary investigation suggests the bomber may have been an Afghan national. If confirmed, this will be one more entry in a pattern that Pakistan's security establishment has spent the better part of two years documenting and that Kabul has spent the same two years denying.

The pattern is no longer disputable in its broad shape, whatever remains contested in its details. Yet, the Afghan Taliban continue to insist the TTP is Pakistan's internal matter, a formulation that asks Islamabad to accept as domestic a threat that is manufactured, trained and sheltered across an international border. That formulation should be rejected as often and as plainly as it is offered. It is worth stating without euphemism what a no tolerance policy actually requires. It requires that the writ of the state be treated as non-negotiable. It requires that facilitators, financiers and sympathisers inside Pakistan face the same institutional resolve as the men who plant the explosives. The Afghan Taliban's continued refusal to act against TTP sanctuaries is not cost-free for Kabul either. A government seeking international legitimacy cannot simultaneously claim sovereignty and disclaim responsibility for what operates from within its borders. That contradiction is the leverage Pakistan's diplomacy should be built around.

The regional picture carries a further complication. India's reopening of its embassy in Kabul and its deepening outreach to the Taliban administration have unfolded in parallel with this conflict. Vigilance here is not paranoia. It is prudence, and it belongs in every diplomatic conversation Pakistan conducts with Kabul.

MQM's dilemma

The MQM-P is in disarray as recent infighting exposes its deep fault lines. Once the heartthrob of Karachiites for defending the city's rights, the party is now dysfunctional. It has split into multiple groups, all fighting for leadership. Compounding this is the party's failure to focus on development, demography and devolution, leaving the urban population marginalised. The recent clash between the Bahadurabad and PIB factions of the party remains unexplained, but their lack of command over workers highlights a complete breakdown of political control.

The largest party of the Urdu-speaking community is visibly locked in an inward-looking power struggle, routinely bickering over tickets and spheres of influence in Karachi. Leaders like Farooq Sattar, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Mustafa Kamal, Amir Khan and Anees Qaimkhani must step up and prioritise internal cohesion. The party completely lacks a coherent political strategy, rendering its performance in the Sindh Assembly a total non-starter. Having abandoned its fight for local government empowerment, the party leadership now seems entirely focused on fighting the provincial government over municipal resources.

This trajectory signals total moral decay, driven by the party's recent reliance on political engineering to enter parliament. Finally, with Karachi in tatters - lacking civic amenities alongside vital health, educational and recreational facilities - the MQM has indispensable homework to do. It cannot stay afloat on ethnic considerations forever. The way forward requires the party to recalibrate its policies and engage constructively with key stakeholders, especially the Sindh government. Revenue generation, district demarcation, census accuracy, decentralization and astute urban planning should become its hallmarks, rather than relying on aggressive sloganeering to push adversaries to the wall.

Bracing for the rains

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department, most of Pakistan has experienced either near normal or below normal rainfall in the month of June. For a country that battles urban flooding and increased fatalities during the monsoon season every year, this should've been a major relief. But despite lower averages, 126 people tragically lost their lives due to heavy rains in just a single week towards the end of July. Whether this implicates the country's capacity for dealing with natural disasters is a question the government will once again evade.

The National Disaster Management Authority has already issued warnings about rising water levels in the Indus River and its tributaries. It has already strictly warned against unnecessarily travel to these regions during these days, with a blanket ban on tourism to Lake Saiful Muluk for the time being. This shows that precautionary measures are being taken by disaster management and weather authorities, but the question is: are they enough to deal with the monster that is urban flooding in Pakistan?

Several major cities have been flagged for urban flooding, including Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan and Hyderabad. Karachi, a city that is brought to a halt after heavy rains, has also received a warning for flash floods. These warnings are not the result of increased rainfall and unprecedented circumstances; they are simply the result of a system that is reliably weak and inadequate.

As the country plunges into August - sometimes the most intense recipient of heavy rains in the country - we can only hope that the state's preparations prove to be sufficient. There is only grief for those who have already lost their lives, but proactive decisions as well as disaster mitigation infrastructure can surely prevent further fatalities.