THIS is an old song, which seems to be an apt description of journalists — especially in Pakistan. Over the decades, the profession has moved on from print to television and now digital but our training remains rooted in old-fashioned ‘generalism’ (if there’s such a word). As with the bureaucrats who run petroleum one day and health the other, we journalists move from commenting on foreign affairs one evening to the economy and healthcare the next. The notion of specialising in issues or studying them in depth is as alien to us as democracy is to Islamabad’s neighbours.

Perhaps this is why most in the profession rarely bother with reading and books. Take history — even of Pakistan. Those of us who entered the field at the time of newspapers learnt the country’s history through oral tradition. Late-night chats with senior colleagues, who had survived martial laws and newsroom working hours, told us of tumultuous times such as war, secession and dictatorship. They included those who remembered what it was like working during the censorship of Ziaul Haq’s times, the night Pervez Musharraf removed the government or when an operation was first launched against the MQM in Karachi. The oral history we learnt alongside copy editing was the best counter-narrative to the whitewashed account taught in school books under Pakistan Studies. Our daastango provided us with a fun but patchy account of the land of the pure.

Patchy, for it leaves us with more questions than answers — the personal accounts that we learn history from are rooted in Pakistan but are a little sketchy on details of the region. Few journalists have travelled around the region and reported on other countries. As a result, many may point out similarities between Pakistan and Egypt (aren’t they obvious?) but few will note what makes them different and why. For a hack such as myself, the biggest difference is perhaps Pakistan’s impatience with its rulers. Our last dictator spent eight years in power, struggling in the last two. And in Egypt, Anwar Sadat spent 11 years in power, Hosni Mubarak around three decades, while Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been ruling for 12 and is still going strong.

Closer to Pakistan, the Gulf states in general have also enjoyed stability and long reigns without much pressure from below. Evidently, this is due to oil, but can it explain everything? After all, Iran is no less oil-rich and yet it went through a revolution, which perhaps remains unprecedented as a political event in the region. Despite the authoritarianism of both the Shah and the theocracy that followed, Iran has demonstrated that its people believe in resistance. In recent years, they have pushed back multiple times against crackdowns; at times they have even compelled the state to change course. This is a strain missing in Iran’s neighbours to the west.

Crowded, noisy and poor, societies in this region struggle with imperfect democracies.

But to its east, it’s a different story. Pakistan and the rest of South Asia, in comparison to its western neighbours in the Middle East, are poorer and noisier.

Is this why this region has avoided the kind of authoritarianism that marks the Middle East? Crowded, noisy and poor, societies in this region continue to struggle with flawed and imperfect democracies; there is flirtation with authoritarianism but on paper most of them adhere or aspire to the framework left by the British. This is true of Pakistan where martial law dictators have also worked hard to prove their democratic credentials by holding elections. And with it comes the inability of rulers in the region to lord it over their citizens for long periods. Indeed, in recent years, Hasina Wajed’s 15 years in power has been quite a feat. In India, Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi have also enjoyed prime ministerships for a similar period of time. On the other hand, in Pakistan, the longest power stints have been a bit shorter.

In a tradition closer to Iran, South Asia has also pushed back against dictators of the civilian (Wajed) and military (Musharraf) type, with street protests forcing them to call it a day. Strongmen such as Modi have also been bested by students armed with their wit and social media, while in Pakistan, authoritarian establishments have struggled to clamp down on criticism on X. This is not entirely new: back in the 1970s, both Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s authoritarian rule came to an end, albeit in very different ways. In one country, the democratic system pushed back while in the other, the military establishment did so.

With all our problems, Pakistan’s journalists still sit in talk shows and complain about the censorship they face; their counterparts in nearby regions are perhaps not allowed to whine thus on live television. In most countries with censorship, journalists usually spend their time complaining about absolute freedom.

There is an ‘argumentative’ South Asian that shapes this region differently from its western neighbours. And perhaps also its eastern ones. Travel east to Myanmar and here once again, regimes tend to become more authoritarian and more long-lasting. The long detention of Aung San Suu Kyi under a martial law regime illustrates this best. After a short experiment with elections and civilian control, Myanmar has returned to military rule but one in which contestation by the people has turned to civil war. While this may seem alien to Pakistanis, it is worrying that in parts of our country we, too, face a situation where the state appears to only control the cities.

But what eventually determines the different state-society relationships in these countries? Why is Myanmar able to sustain military rule while Bangladesh is not? Or why has Pakistan, despite its close ties to the Middle East, not been able to impose a similar system of government? Now if I hadn’t learnt history in newsrooms and had read more, perhaps I could have answered some of these questions.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2026

I have my own conspiracy theory, if that is what one must call it, about the origins of the phrase and I pin it on the zealous and potent Zionist media. Technically, the phrase is ascribed to the 19th-century claim that Britain backed the Confederates in the American Civil War. But its first significantly notable use was the CIA’s attempt to debunk compelling questions about the assassination of JFK in 1963, particularly those leading to an Israeli hand. We’ll come to that. Nipping curiosity or agreeable narratives about the Israel lobby in the imperial hub of the US, which John Mearsheimer wrote a book about, remains a problem for Third World media consumers of Western-origin reports, which subtly or staunchly, knowingly or unwittingly root for the Zionist worldview.

A new potentially important theory has surfaced about the over-chewed 9/11 narrative. Renowned anti-establishment American anchor Jimmy Dore interviewed Curt Weldon last week. The former 10-term Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania claimed new revelations into the affair. Weldon has spent decades claiming that a secret US military intelligence programme called Able Danger identified 9/11 hijackers before the attacks, and that the information was deliberately buried. Unsurprisingly, the claims routinely have been officially denied.

Weldon served as Congressman from 1987 to 2007 and was vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Before Congress, he was a lifelong volunteer firefighter, and he responded to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing and the 9/11 attacks themselves. He has long argued that he lost his 2006 re-election bid as retaliation for his efforts to expose pre-9/11 intelligence failures.

A new potentially important theory has surfaced about the over-chewed 9/11 narrative.

Weldon’s new book, Able Danger: What the 9/11 Commission Never Told You, is scheduled for release today (Sept 22), and presents more than his hitherto detailed accounts of 9/11 allegations.

The central claim is that a classified US Army data-mining programme called Able Danger used supercomputers to analyse intelligence databases and identified leading hijacker Mohamed Atta and his ‘Brooklyn cell’ over a year before 9/11. Weldon alleges that Able Danger team members tried to pass this information to the FBI at least three times by late 2000, but were blocked by military lawyers and bureaucratic ‘walls’.

The 9/11 Commission released its report in 2004, and Able Danger’s findings were nowhere to be seen, the book laments. Weldon claims that the Commission deliberately omitted the most consequential facts to protect reputations and avoid accountability. He said his 2006 election loss was part of a “deep state” plot to prevent him from becoming Armed Services Committee chairman and exposing the truth.

Why was Weldon bringing up the charges today, a quarter century after the event and what’s new? Dore believes the book offers a series of explosive allegations that go beyond the standard ‘Able Danger’ intelligence failure narrative, directly accusing senior US officials of not just failing to prevent 9/11, but of actively planning and covering it up.

A personal memo Weldon retrieved from his archives ties the FBI raid on his daughter’s home three weeks before his 2006 election to the Able Danger cover-up. According to Weldon, the memo was sent by a top adviser to then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the same day as the raid, and it stated: “Kurt, I warned you about Able Danger. Dick and Don are now going to destroy you.” He frames this as proof that his political destruction was orchestrated by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to prevent him from becoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and exposing the programme.

Weldon’s key assertions include the claim that the administration played games with Mohamed Atta’s identity, referring to him as ‘Mohamed Elsa’ to obscure that Able Danger had identified him. He also claims that army intelligence officer Erik Kleinsmith was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of Able Danger data to prevent it from coming to light. Crucially, Weldon alleges that the US knew where Osama bin Laden was when it invaded Afghanistan and actually helped hide him in the Balochistan region (overlapping Iran and Pakistan), while sending American soldiers to die searching for him. He specifically accuses Commission director Philip Zelikow of leading a “whitewash”.

It doesn’t matter much what Weldon is aiming to do with the new book. The point to note is that a former Congressman from the Republican circuit is making claims as an insider, which pits his version of the story against the familiar flat denial sans a winning logic.

Comparing Kennedy’s assassination with 9/11 terrorism throws up several points to ponder, keeping Israel in the crosshairs. In the 9/11 event, five Israelis were arrested after being reported for allegedly dancing with joy, according to Chinese news reports of the attack. The arrests happened but the joy was apparently not proved and the men were freed. The FBI found no foreknowledge of the terror event with the men. In Kennedy’s case, a widely shared belief that the Mossad killed him is backed by a clear motive — Kennedy’s documented push for inspecting Israel’s illegal Dimona nuclear facility. Declassified files showed the CIA redacted ‘Israel’ among other countries. As many would prefer to see it, the bristling scorn Israel reserves for JFK’s legacy is readily reflected in Donald Trump’s furious plans to shut down the Kennedy Centre over false claims that it was a financial drain. Conspiracy theory? Dampen your enthusiasm till we come to the Epstein files, whenever they become public, if ever.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2026

The forthcoming talks planned between Pakistani and US leadership on the margins of the UN General Assembly offer both sides a wondrous opportunity to re-envision bilateral ties in a broader spectrum of cooperation: more meaningful, multidimensional, and consistent.

Given the expanding scope of engagement between the two countries in recent times, there is now both an opportunity and a compelling rationale to orient the relationship toward a more forward-looking framework — one attuned to the new era in which fast-moving technological, economic and geopolitical shifts carry profound implications. This calls for a reinvigorated partnership, unbound by the exigencies of the moment and grounded instead in the enduring aspirations and interests of both nations.

Washington has long recognised that Pakistan matters in its own right, by virtue of its demography, diplomacy, geography, and strategic weight. Its location, at the confluence of South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East and the Arabian Sea, gives it intrinsic relevance to regional and global connectivity, trade and security.

A population exceeding 250 million makes it one of the world’s largest potential markets and a vast reservoir of human capital, while its geography offers a natural bridge to resource-rich economies of Central Asia, to say nothing of Pakistan’s own substantial, still under-explored resource endowments. Its diplomatic reach has been on full display this year as Islamabad worked to bring stability to the wider region, most notably through its widely noted mediatory role during the recent US-Iran-Israel conflict.

A historic relationship

These factors will shape the forward-looking cast of the discussions in New York. But history too will loom over the encounter as both sides survey the possibilities ahead. Pakistan and the United States have cooperated since 1947 at several defining moments in world affairs.

Pakistan was a key American ally during the Cold War and instrumental in facilitating the opening between Nixon’s Washington and Mao’s Beijing, arguably one of the most consequential turns in international affairs since World War II. Islamabad also bore enormous human and economic costs standing alongside the United States and the international community during the War on Terror.

These episodes point to something essential: the relationship has repeatedly served as a fulcrum for shaping the international system at moments of the greatest strain or change.

Yet two other threads run through this history: a lack of continuity and a narrowness of engagement.

A forward-looking relationship must reckon with the need for stable, sustained bilateral contact and a broader horizon of connectivity. The avenues for doing so are well known — strategic dialogue, parliamentary exchanges, economic consultations, business-to-business investment, greater multinational presence, educational and scientific partnerships, people-to-people ties and regular engagement between diplomatic, defence and commercial institutions. Such mechanisms have long existed; what has been missing is continuity at meaningful scale. Only through that consistency can a durable architecture emerge, one dynamic enough to evolve as circumstances change.

The path ahead

With continuity and breadth in mind, the most promising path to a sustainable partnership runs through economics. There is considerable room to expand trade, investment, technology and enterprise.

Pakistan’s mineral potential, including critical minerals, dovetails with America’s growing interest in resilient and diversified supply chains. But the real prize lies further downstream, in processing capacity, technology partnerships, industrial value chains, skills development and manufacturing within Pakistan itself.

Similar opportunities exist in information technology, artificial intelligence, agriculture, energy, advanced manufacturing, health and digital services. Pakistan’s young population and growing technology sector offer American companies an increasingly attractive platform for new markets, new talent and new production partnerships at a notably competitive cost.

Security cooperation remains an important pillar, but it too can take on a broader, more forward-looking character. Pakistan has paid an extraordinary human and economic price to terrorism and continues to face extremist threats in its neighbourhood.

Washington and Islamabad have reaffirmed their determination to cooperate against terrorist organisations and to strengthen border security and counterterrorism capacity. But the purpose of that cooperation, described by American military officials as a “phenomenal” partnership just last year — should be to help build a regional environment in which economic development, connectivity, and human security can flourish.

A stable Pakistan is not merely a domestic aspiration; it serves the regional and international interest, since stability strengthens the prospects for trade, connectivity, investment and moderation across a region of great strategic significance.

As the coming dialogue should underscore, the convergence between Pakistani and American interests runs wider than is sometimes acknowledged. Both countries benefit from a more peaceful South Asia, a more connected Central Asia, and a more integrated regional economy. And a broadening Pakistan- US relationship would help avert ‘Thucydides Trap’ playing out in South Asia.

Equally importantly, both countries have a stake in denying terrorism new space — particularly in view of the evolving situation in Afghanistan — and in expanding legitimate commerce and ensuring young populations are drawn toward opportunity rather than instability. Pakistan has repeatedly shown it can serve as a bridge between countries that do not easily communicate with one another — including most recently Iran and the United States. This could add another dimension to the bilateral cooperation framework.

The world is passing through a period of transition that demands new pillars of stability and new engines of growth. This is where Pakistan and the United States have the opportunity to write a new chapter — one that can surpass those that came before it, if built on a broad scope of engagement and genuine continuity. What is required now of both sides is an orientation toward enduring possibilities of the relationship: deep enough to withstand occasional differences of perspectives and ambitious enough to help build a more connected, prosperous and peaceful region.

Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar signed the agreement with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, he said in a post on X.

DPM Dar hoped the step would “further facilitate high-level engagement and institutional exchanges, and contribute to advancing our enduring and brotherly strategic partnership across all areas of mutual interest”.

The two countries share robust bilateral cooperation, with frequent high-level diplomatic exchanges on both sides.

On August 7, ​​​​​​​Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, alongside Turkiye, also signed a joint defence agreement pledging to strengthen collective security, deepen defence cooperation and promote peace and stability in the region and beyond.

Later that month, the two countries agreed to boost Pakistani agricultural and food exports to the Gulf state up to $3 billion. The agreement was reached during the visit of a Saudi delegation led by Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Engineer Abdulrahman Al-Fadley.

In July, Saudi Arabia had also launched a multiple-entry Umrah visa with one-year validity from the date of issuance, enabling pilgrims to enter the kingdom multiple times, with a cumulative stay of up to 90 days each year. In 2024, in another relief, Riyadh eased tourist visa requirements for Pakistani travellers, allowing them to submit a bank statement showing a minimum monthly credit amount of $750 or its equivalent.