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Islamabad Diary

The VIP Republic

Pakistan’s political elite remains preoccupied with expanding their own privileges rather than addressing the country’s deepening crises

By Ishtiaq Ali Mehkri | August 2026

Javed Jabbar, an orator par excellence and one of the leading visionaries of our times, is a dove when it comes to bilateralism with India. He has an articulate mindset favouring peace and dialogue. And he has excelled in it as being part of the Track-2 parleys of which this scribe was also a small fry in the years 2003 to 2007. The senator is a towering figure, though. Dr Meenakshi Gopinath and Wiscomp had then led from the front. India’s egalitarian thinkers used to huddle at 10 Janpath Road to think out of the box with their Pakistani counterparts. It was déjà vu for me to learn that the veteran has once again taken on the mantle to broker a thaw with New Delhi.

It is a whiff of fresh air that 117 notables from Islamabad and New Delhi have written a letter to their respective Prime Ministers, calling for “meaningful and sustained” steps to restore peace. That entails a humble plea to resume consular services, air and transport links, as well as trade, pushing the envelope further for a subsequent dialogue on more intricate issues. Ironically, the statecraft is in limbo and has no response. The least that Mr Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif can do is to upend the prevailing sense of otherness, and make room for impartiality to flourish.

Mr Sharif, you may be failing on many counts, but have carved a niche when it comes to mediation. A test case for you is to reach out to your counterpart in Delhi, and get talking even in adversity. Your brother and three-time Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has a legacy of standing tall, at least, in pursuit of reconciliation with India. Thus, Javed Jabbar is spot on when he says that the progress attained till 2007 by both the civil societies “exemplifies the finest and irrefutable reasons why the Pakistan-India dialogue, as urged in the letter to the Prime Ministers, is an inexorable imperative.”

The senator and former federal information minister can be a great addition as a ‘peace emissary’ to soften the rigidities, and let serenity blossom across the Great Divide. He knows the art of persuasion and can enthrall his audience. O.P. Shah, Khursheed Kasuri, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, Shamshad Ahmed, the Mirwaiz, Farooq Abdullah, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Manoj Jha, A.S. Dulat and the like can surely help subdue the hawks. The point is: millions of divided families have been wronged; time to resurrect their hopes.


Pakistan is in a perpetual grip of elite capture, and the movers-and-shakers in Islamabad are its Godfathers. With a foregone conclusion from the World Bank that $22 billion per annum goes to the affluent, there is hardly any hope for the 250 million children of lesser gods to even dream of a rainy day. The upper-crust is now callous to the core. The pity is that out of a Rs.18 trillion budget, the developmental pie is less than a trillion bucks.

Yet, a Senate panel ‘unanimously’ approved a bill seeking to allow the issuance of blue passports to dependent children under the age of 28 of ex-members of parliament. This privilege is currently availed by scions of retired Grade-22 officers too. What a ruthless attitude as bona fide Pakistanis struggle to seek their due, with their passports turning out to be non grata at foreign missions and immigration, alike. These 1000-plus legislators, and those at the helm, care only for their perks and privileges and have the audacity to shamelessly lecture on austerity.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s so-called ‘righteous’ assembly with its two-thirds majority, likewise, failed the litmus test as it legislated to grant official passports to members and their spouses, arms licenses, and blanket immunity from preventive detention. Whither Imran Khan! His boys have played foul and let him down. CM Sohail Afridi and Speaker Babar Swati’s review assurances are too little, too late. The damage is done.

POSTSCRIPT: With a population explosion growth rate of 2.5%, we will soon have more than 300 million half-fed mouths, stunted and dispossessed. Aristotle is right as he says, “…poverty is the parent of both revolution and crime.” We are on the verge of it. The government now wants the Field Marshal to tackle this issue too. It is, indeed, a capitulation. We have collectively failed in ensuring a logical check on fertility, and likewise in arenas of food security, environmental degradation and, of course, nation-building. Better to pass on the mantle.

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