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The Strategic Brief

From Rent-Seeking to Productive Demand: Rethinking Pakistan’s Economic Dilemma

August 25, 2026

Azhar Rashid Khan, PSP

Pakistan’s recurring economic crises are usually diagnosed the same way: too little national savings, too little exported output, too much consumption, and too much debt. The prescribed remedy, repeated across successive IMF programmes, is a familiar cycle — borrow, stabilise, impose austerity, recover briefly, and borrow again. By March 2026, Pakistan’s external debt stock.

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16–31.8.26 Domestic BALOCHISTAN Six women were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Qila Abdullah, Noshki, Nasirabad and
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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Security Situation & Assessment –

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CounterTerrorism

- Terrorism -
August 9, 2026

Asif Iqbal

“The state is not a neutral arbiter. It is the organised power of one class to suppress another – and when the class is a community, the suppression wears the face of order.” ~ Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint, 2017

          On the morning of May 5, 2026, a blast rocked an area near the Iroisemba oil pump on the outskirts of Imphal. There were no casualties. There rarely are in these minor detonations – and that is precisely the point. In Manipur, violence no longer announces itself with the drama of pitched battle or the spectacle of mass atrocity. It has.

Previous Highlights

SECURITY AT A GLANCE

16–31.8.26 Domestic BALOCHISTAN Six women were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Qila Abdullah, Noshki, Nasirabad and
- September 3, 2026

From Rent-Seeking to Productive Demand: Rethinking

Azhar Rashid Khan, PSP Introduction Pakistan's recurring economic crises are usually diagnosed the same way: too little
- August 25, 2026

SECURITY AT A GLANCE

16–31.8.26 Domestic BALOCHISTAN Six women were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Qila Abdullah, Noshki, Nasirabad and
- September 3, 2026

From Rent-Seeking to Productive Demand: Rethinking

Azhar Rashid Khan, PSP Introduction Pakistan's recurring economic crises are usually diagnosed the same way: too little
- August 25, 2026

SECURITY AT A GLANCE

16–31.8.26 Domestic BALOCHISTAN Six women were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Qila Abdullah, Noshki, Nasirabad and
- September 3, 2026

From Rent-Seeking to Productive Demand: Rethinking

Azhar Rashid Khan, PSP Introduction Pakistan's recurring economic crises are usually diagnosed the same way: too little
- August 25, 2026

SECURITY AT A GLANCE

16–31.8.26 Domestic BALOCHISTAN Six women were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Qila Abdullah, Noshki, Nasirabad and
- September 3, 2026

From Rent-Seeking to Productive Demand: Rethinking

Azhar Rashid Khan, PSP Introduction Pakistan's recurring economic crises are usually diagnosed the same way: too little
- August 25, 2026