Pakistan’s political class still quarrels as if no one outside the room is listening. No surprise that India and Afghanistan listen. They always do. And they clip every noisy claim, feeding it back into their own narratives about a divided Pakistan.
The Foreign Office promptly rejected Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s claim that India’s problems with Pakistan stem from its military establishment, terming it another routine effort to shift responsibility for Delhi’s policy choices. However, such claims find oxygen precisely because Pakistan’s domestic quarrels
routinely spill into foreign media ecosystems.
Whether it is PTI supporters venting online or using incendiary hashtags, Indian and Afghan outlets curate these fragments into sweeping narratives about a country at war with itself.
The government’s counteroffensive was predictable. Ministers accused PTI of handing others a ready-made gift. Some of that accusation sticks. PTI leaders know how quickly their words travel across borders. Pakistan’s politics has long been syndicated across newsrooms in New Delhi. But the ruling coalition’s own theatrics add to the din. Answering politics with theatre and turning pressers into morality plays, when every side insists on performing for its own base, others enjoy a free show.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar’s warning about interviews given by Imran Khan’s sisters being weaponised by “Indian and Afghan media” is less an attack and more a reminder of how porous the narrative space has become. After the skirmish in May and India’s increasingly defensive diplomatic posture, New Delhi is eager for any controversy that reinforces its own version of events.
No one should pretend the opposition has no grievances. PTI maintains that a party with a sizeable public mandate has been pushed to the margins through arrests, disqualifications and media curbs. That perception of exclusion defines its rhetoric. Still, the government has a valid point that national cohesion matters the most. It is hard to fault anyone for asking for steadiness when the stakes rise.
Pakistan is an open society. Journalists, activists and politicians have the right–and arguably, the duty–to press the state with hard questions. A democratic state must protect debate, yet it must also protect its own narrative discipline.
Allegations, counter-allegations and institutional concerns must return to the forums designed to handle them.
Let Pakistan interpret Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the economy and security are not waiting. Driving investment and growth, from energy projects to trade routes, is urgent. A country absorbed by conspiracy needs reminding that bread-and-butter issues still matter most to ordinary citizens. *