Muhammad Omar Iftikhar 

The Global and Regional Studies Center (GRSC) at the Institute of Business Management (IoBM) hosted the launch of Blood and Toil, authored by Brigadier Tariq Khalil, SJ, SI(M), IS Gallantry (Bar), (Retired), on Saturday, July 26, 2026. Blood and Toil is a memoir that chronicles Brigadier Tariq Khalil’s military career while highlighting the values of discipline, sacrifice, resilience, ethical leadership, and national duty. Drawing on his personal experiences, the book offers readers a firsthand perspective on military life and a deeper understanding of Pakistan’s armed forces and the principles that underpin effective leadership. The event brought together academics, professionals, retired military officers, and students to discuss the book and its reflections on leadership, service, governance, and national responsibility. A panel of distinguished reviewers comprising Lt. Gen. (R) Moinuddin Haider, Col. (R) Mukhtar Butt, Syed Manzar Naqvi, and Dr. Zaituna Shah shared their perspectives on the book.

Representing IoBM at the event were Talib Karim, President; Prof. Dr. Tariq Rahim Soomro, Rector; Prof. Dr. Muhammad Kashif, Dean, CBM; Prof. Dr. Muhammad Abbas, Dean, CCSIS, and Ambassador G. R. Baluch, Director GRSC, along with faculty members, heads of departments, and students.

Speaking on the occasion, Talib Karim said Blood and Toil would enrich research and learning at IoBM by offering valuable insights into leadership, governance, and national affairs. Referring to developments in South Asia, he said the book encourages reflection on leadership, governance, and the role of young people in national development. He added that such experiences offer valuable lessons for policymakers and future leaders.

Brigadier Tariq Khalil (Retired) described Blood and Toil as the story of his life, beginning in the pre-Partition era and covering his experiences during Pakistan’s conflicts with India, including the 1971 war. He said the book is a compilation of articles and reflections documenting different phases of his military career and the country’s history, making it a useful reference for historians, researchers, and professionals. He also spoke about the changing geopolitical environment, observing that Pakistan is navigating a transition towards an emerging multipolar world and must prepare itself for the challenges ahead.

Reviewing the book, Lt. Gen. (R) Moinuddin Haider said the generation that witnessed Partition and Pakistan’s early wars is gradually fading, making it essential to preserve their experiences for future generations. He noted that Brigadier (R) Tariq Khalil’s experience in the military, public service, and the corporate sector gives the book a distinctive perspective. He observed that many of the issues raised in the author’s newspaper columns nearly five decades ago remain relevant today and appreciated his efforts to encourage informed national debate.

Col. (R) Mukhtar Butt said the global order has shifted from a unipolar to a multipolar system, creating new geopolitical realities. Stressing the importance of regional cooperation, he said Pakistan must strengthen relations with neighbouring countries while promoting national unity, internal stability, and effective governance to address future challenges. Syed Manzar Naqvi, described Blood and Toil as an important historical account that documents Pakistan’s journey through the author’s personal experiences. He praised Brigadier Tariq Khalil for preserving significant moments in the country’s history and expressed his appreciation for the author’s continued contributions. Dr. Zaituna Shah said the book presents a comprehensive account of the regional and geopolitical developments that have shaped Pakistan’s history. She noted that it provides readers with valuable insights into national and international affairs through the author’s personal observations and experiences.

Earlier, in his welcome address, Ambassador G. R. Baluch said that by hosting book launches, IoBM continues to uphold the vision and values on which the Institute was founded. Referring to the late founder of IoBM, Mr. Shahjehan S. Karim, he said universities should not only impart education but also promote critical thinking, knowledge creation, and meaningful contributions to society. He added that IoBM’s book launch programme provides a platform for scholars, diplomats, policymakers, military professionals, journalists, and students to engage in intellectual dialogue and exchange ideas. Referring to the author, Ambassador Baluch said Brigadier Tariq Khalil writes from firsthand experience, enabling readers to gain a deeper understanding of the events, decisions, and historical developments that have shaped Pakistan. He added that Blood and Toil is not merely a memoir but a valuable contribution to the country’s intellectual discourse. The event concluded with an interactive question-and-answer session, during which participants discussed the book and exchanged views with the author on Pakistan’s evolving geopolitical environment and contemporary national challenges.

By S Shujahat Ali

Turn on TV or go to youtube, Ads have been increasingly using AI and AI generated advertising does not merely sell products. Increasingly, it sells realities.

And those realities are constructed from the data on which algorithms are trained , not necessarily from the emotions, experiences and lived realities of the people they claim to represent.

The danger is not only misinformation in the traditional sense. It is subtler.

AI can slowly manufacture a synthetic Pakistan: polished, homogenized, algorithmically optimized and emotionally manipulative. A Pakistan that looks like suburban Spain, a global metropolis, or even a utopia, but not necessarily like the country itself. Corporations and algorithms are beginning to decide what Pakistan looks like.

The marketing director is becoming, in effect, the country’s unofficial minister of national heritage and cultural imagination. Which homes are shown? Which accents are considered acceptable? Which skin tones appear aspirational? Which cities look modern? Which citizens are visible, and which disappear into the background?

The Pakistan increasingly presented in AI-generated advertisements often resembles an abstract global metropolis more than the country we actually inhabit. Its streets are impossibly clean. Its cafés look Scandinavian. Its families speak in carefully neutralized accents. Its young people dance at open-air concerts beneath neon skies. Everyone is attractive, emotionally articulate, upper-middle-class and permanently well-adjusted.

But this is not merely harmless fantasy.

Advertising has always idealized reality. AI changes the scale and credibility of that idealization.

Over time, this has consequences.

A nation begins to internalize synthetic standards of beauty, success and belonging. AI systems trained largely on globalized datasets can reproduce the same visual hierarchies repeatedly: lighter skin, elite urban aesthetics, minimalist interiors, Westernized body language, imported lifestyles and sanitized emotional cultures.

AI has not merely accelerated the death of the internet. It may be contributing to the death of reality and of diversity. And, the result is not representation. It is the algorithmic filtering of national identity. Entire populations risk becoming culturally invisible.

Does an AI system know anything about the Hindko spoken around Qalandarabad, KP? Does it understand the cultural world of the Kalash valleys? Can it represent the working-class commuter travelling from College Road to Saddar in Rawalpindi? Does it know what life looks like in Pattoki, or the humour of a small-town wedding, or the particular chaos of a Pakistani roadside market?

The small town disappears because it is absent from the data. Regional textures disappear. Older faces disappear. Local humour disappears. Traditional, imperfect architecture disappears, unless it is aestheticized for elite consumption.

This is why the debate around AI advertising is not merely about technology.

It is about sovereignty over imagination. It is about societal representation and national identity. And, ultimately, it is about who gets to define what a country looks like to itself.

Who gets to define Pakistani modernity and identity?

If left entirely to corporations and optimization algorithms, national imagination itself becomes privatized. And unlike elected governments, algorithms are not accountable to citizens. Their incentives are engagement, aspiration and consumption, not cultural balance, psychological health or social cohesion.

This does not mean Pakistan should reject AI. Nor should art be reduced to state propaganda or rigid nationalism. Creativity requires freedom and freedom without awareness can slowly become dependency.

Pakistan urgently needs a broader public conversation around AI-generated advertising and synthetic media.

At a minimum, AI-generated and substantially AI-enhanced visuals in major advertisements should be transparently labelled. Regulatory bodies such as PEMRA should begin developing ethical standards around synthetic realism, manipulated representation and deceptive imagery.

But regulation alone will not be enough.

Pakistan also needs to begin collecting, preserving and organizing its own cultural data.

We need indigenous datasets that capture the country’s linguistic, regional and social diversity. We need to encourage the ethical collection and labelling of local images, voices, accents, architecture, clothing, music, humour and everyday life.

The answer to biased global datasets cannot simply be to import more technology.

We must also build the data that allows our own realities to be represented.

To this end, Pakistan should begin formulating national guidelines for AI-generated advertising and synthetic media.

These guidelines should establish clear standards for the labelling of AI-generated and substantially AI-enhanced advertisements. They should encourage transparency where synthetic imagery could materially mislead audiences. They should promote responsible data collection and the development of indigenous cultural datasets.

Most importantly, they should encourage media institutions and advertisers to ask a basic question:

Are we using AI to better represent Pakistan or to replace it?

Pakistan possesses extraordinary cultural diversity, linguistic richness and social complexity. AI should help preserve, explore and expand these realities. It should not flatten them into a generic algorithmic aesthetic imported from elsewhere. Because nations are eventually shaped by the stories they repeatedly tell themselves. And if Pakistan stops imagining itself honestly, someone else, or something else, will do the imagining for us.

By S Shujahat Ali
Civil Servant (Fulbright Scholar)

by Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal

In the autumn of 2005, the earth rose in wrath against the ancient hills of Kashmir. On the eighth day of October, a violent convulsion of 7.6 magnitude tore through the region, its epicentre lying a mere 19 kms northeast of Muzaffarabad. The tremor was felt far beyond Pakistan’s borders, reverberating through Afghanistan and Tajikistan, across the valleys of India, and even into the remote expanses of Xinjiang. It proved one of the deadliest natural disasters of that decade, claiming thousands of lives and reducing entire villages to rubble. For months the ground refused to rest; careful records later counted no fewer than 497 aftershocks between October and the following March. During such uncertainty a sobering lesson emerged; buildings erected with care and strength stood firm against the repeated tremors, while those raised hastily or without conscience crumbled into dust and despair.

A parallel drama of sudden upheaval and lingering aftershocks has unfolded more recently, though this time the forces at work have been those of human conflict rather than nature’s blind fury. Late in February 2026, long-simmering tensions between Iran and USA erupted into open warfare, with Israel joining the fray in decisive fashion. Large-scale aerial and missile assaults struck hundreds of targets across Iran, homing in upon military bases, nuclear facilities, and centres of leadership. The loss of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the opening strikes sent shockwaves through the region and beyond. Tehran responded with barrages of missiles and swarms of drones that lit the night skies and struck at targets across several countries. For several weeks in March and April the fighting intensified, leaving thousands dead—most of them in Iran and Lebanon—and threatening to engulf wider circles of involvement involving Hezbollah and other actors. Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, that vital artery of global energy, faced grave peril, and the world watched anxiously as oil supplies trembled on the edge of disruption.

A measure of relief arrived around the middle of June when a MOU was concluded between the United States and Iran. The accord promised a halt to major combat operations, the reopening of the strait to peaceful navigation, and the beginning of serious negotiations concerning Iran’s nuclear program. For a brief season hope flickered that reason might yet prevail. Yet by the seventh and eighth of July the ceasefire had fractured. Iranian forces struck at merchant vessels in the Hormuz passage; the United States answered with fresh waves of airstrikes and the reimposition of a naval blockade. Iran, in turn, launched retaliatory attacks upon American and coalition positions in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and elsewhere. As July draws toward its close, the pattern of nocturnal American strikes and Iranian counterblows continues, holding the Gulf in a state of restless tension.

Though the principal theatre of war lies distant from our frontiers, its aftershocks have travelled with merciless swiftness to the streets and bazaars of Pakistan. The initial convulsion in global oil markets followed hard upon the early phase of hostilities. Petrol prices in Pakistan surged to an unprecedented four hundred and fifty-eight rupees and forty-one paise per litre on the third of April—a record born of disrupted supplies and fevered speculation. Diesel climbed still higher, touching five hundred and twenty rupees and thirty-five paise. The consequences touched every corner of national life; transporters raised their fares, farmers faced higher costs for machinery and transport, and ordinary households tightened their belts as inflation rippled outward. For a time, as diplomatic channels—including Pakistan’s own quiet mediation efforts—bore fruit and the strait began to function once more, prices eased and a measure of stability returned. Yet the renewed outbreak of fighting in July has shattered that fragile calm. Oil prices have again become uncontrollable, climbing under the pressure of uncertainty and fresh speculation. The government, its options narrowed by heavy reliance on international loans and a vulnerable economy, has found itself compelled to adjust domestic fuel rates almost daily, basing decisions as much upon forecasts of future trouble as upon present realities.

Thus, the nation has endured a great initial shock followed by persistent aftershocks, much like the Kashmir earthquake two decades earlier. Each fresh tremor in the Gulf sends another wave through our foreign exchange reserves, our transport sector, and the fragile purchasing power of the common citizen. Industries dependent upon steady fuel supplies have curtailed operations; the cost of everyday commodities has risen in sympathy; and the burden has fallen most heavily upon those least able to bear it. Pakistan’s economy, long accustomed to navigating external storms while standing upon borrowed foundations, feels these disturbances with particular acuity.

Even in these challenging times, the dry wit of everyday Pakistanis remains unshaken. One recalls an incident from the days when the Daily Pakistan newspaper was under the ownership of Akbar Bhatti. A reporter rushed into the newsroom one afternoon declaring that Bhatti Sahib’s car had met with an accident. Before concern could fully form, another veteran journalist remarked with a knowing smile that this surely meant salaries would not arrive on time that month. The quip, though light, spoke volumes about the precariousness of life and livelihood when those at the helm encounter misfortune.

Pakistan has passed through many such seasons of trial—political upheavals, economic tempests, and natural calamities alike. Each time the nation has gathered its scattered strength, mended what could be mended, and pressed onward. The present difficulties arising from the conflict in the Gulf, with their daily toll upon fuel prices and economic confidence, constitute yet another test of our collective endurance. The strong institutions and resilient spirit of the people have served as anchors in the past; they remain our surest hope today. God willing, this too shall pass, and Pakistan shall emerge from these aftershocks steadier and more united, its foundations reinforced by hardship and its future secured by the unyielding will of its citizens.