Pakistan 'teetering on failure': Ex-Singapore envoy
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- Bilahari Kausikan, former Singapore ambassador, called Pakistan "a state teetering on the brink of failure" at a global conference, arguing its diplomatic wins — including brokering the US-Iran interim peace framework last month — "don't feed the Pakistani people"
- Kausikan singled out Pakistan's politicians and military as the core problem, calling the politicians "a waste of time, all of them, regardless of parties" and saying "the military is a big part of the problem" — not India or Afghanistan
- Pakistan's military has directly governed the country for nearly half its history, and even during civilian rule its influence has hung over government operations, per the article
- Kausikan poured cold water on expectations of a broader US-Pakistan thaw, saying Washington would never lift all its restrictions on Islamabad: "I don't think the US is going to lift whatever restrictions in totality it has on Pakistan"
- Pakistan remains among the top 10 countries facing an acute food crisis, per a Dawn report cited in the article, and relies heavily on IMF and World Bank bailouts to manage its debt
- The Trump administration earlier this year indefinitely paused processing of immigrant visas for Pakistani nationals — a concrete US curb Kausikan said would persist
Why it matters: Kausikan's verdict undercuts the narrative that Pakistan's role brokering the US-Iran peace framework marks a turning point: he says the diplomatic rehabilitation changes nothing about Pakistan's structural economic and governance crisis. The US has already shown it won't ease up — the indefinite visa pause this year is one concrete curb — meaning Islamabad's diplomatic capital yields limited material returns while the food and debt crises persist.
