Washington’s Necessity

The United States may have withdrawn its forces from Afghanistan in 2021, but it has not ceased to exercise considerable influence over the country or the wider international response to militancy emerging from its territory. Washington retains diplomatic, financial and institutional tools that can shape the behaviour of the Taliban authorities and restrict the activities of terrorist organisations operating across the region.

The fourth US-Pakistan counter-terrorism dialogue is therefore a welcome development. The explicit identification of the T Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Balochistan Liberation Army, and ISIS-K as common threats is particularly significant. Pakistan has long argued that these organisations are not merely domestic irritants but regional security challenges requiring coordinated international action.

Much of the global machinery capable of damaging terrorist organisations still runs through Washington. Sanctions against financiers and facilitators, restrictions on travel and financial transactions, intelligence cooperation, multilateral pressure and the international delegitimisation of militant groups are all areas in which American support remains consequential. Islamabad must use its renewed engagement with Washington to ensure that those supporting terrorism against Pakistan face real diplomatic and financial costs.

Such cooperation does not require Pakistan to abandon its broader geopolitical orientation towards China. Foreign policy need not be reduced to a choice between competing powers. Pakistan can maintain its strategic partnership with Beijing while working with Washington where interests overlap, particularly in counter-terrorism and regional stability.

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The parallel progress on a reciprocal trade framework is equally important. Security partnerships rarely endure when they are disconnected from wider economic interests. Expanded trade, investment and commercial cooperation can provide the bilateral relationship with the stability needed to sustain counter-terrorism coordination beyond temporary crises.

Pakistan and the United States have a clear area of mutual interest. That opportunity must now be converted into practical action against the networks threatening Pakistan’s security.

Weaponising Migration

Regardless of one’s views on economic migration or refugee policy, the scenes witnessed in Ceuta cannot be described as an ordinary border crisis. The organised movement of tens of thousands of people towards the Spanish enclave, amid truckloads of migrants being brought to the frontier and encouraged to cross, bears the disturbing hallmarks of a premeditated attempt to overwhelm another country’s borders.

The human cost has been appalling. At least 72 people are reported to have died, many while attempting to swim around the border barriers separating Morocco from Ceuta. An unimaginable tragedy.

Those celebrating the crisis have hardly attempted to conceal their motives. Israeli social media accounts, including that of Yair Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s son, gleefully and proudly portrayed the influx as “revenge” against Spain for its principled position on Gaza. Such reactions expose the dangerous mentality behind the weaponisation of migration: civilians are pushed across borders, communities are destabilised, and human suffering is applauded as a tool of political punishment.

It is also significant that the United States and Israel had recently thrown their support behind Moroccan claims involving Spain’s North African enclaves. Given Spain’s comments, the political context cannot be ignored.

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The consequences will extend far beyond Ceuta. The crisis has already reverberated across Europe, where governments are tightening borders, and right-wing movements will inevitably use the episode to inflame hostility towards migrants. The victims will once again be ordinary refugees and economic migrants, who will face greater suspicion because states and political actors have chosen to use migration as a weapon.

Israel must be held responsible for encouraging and celebrating the weaponisation of migration against Spain. Migration cannot be allowed to become a tool for punishing governments that take principled positions on Gaza or any other international issue. The dead deserve accountability, and Europe deserves protection from manufactured instability.