Faisal Ahmad<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s relationship with Islamabad used to run on a single track. Now, it\u2019s running on at least three, and the order in which this year\u2019s events unfolded says something about which one now leads.
\nIt started, fittingly, with diplomacy rather than defence. In February, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the inaugural Board of Peace summit in Washington. The two sides discussed critical minerals, energy, counterterrorism and investment, in that order, according to the State Department\u2019s own readout. Rubio welcomed Pakistan\u2019s participation in a recent Critical Minerals Ministerial; Deputy PM spoke afterward of advancing economic and trade ties. A relationship once introduced to the world through drone strikes and troop surges was, for one afternoon, introduced through a mineral ministerial.
\nThat emphasis wasn\u2019t accidental. Days later, the Office of the US Trade Representative opened formal public consultations towards a \u201cPlurilateral agreement on Trade in Critical Minerals\u201d. It is an initiative aimed squarely at reducing American dependence on Chinese-processed minerals, and one in which Pakistan\u2019s copper, iron ore and coal reserves make it a plausible, if unproven, partner. Unlike Pakistan\u2019s past bids for Washington\u2019s attention, this one isn\u2019t contingent on a war, a manhunt or a ceasefire. It\u2019s driven by an American industrial-policy problem that exists whether or not Pakistan is stable, cooperative or even mentioned in the news that week. That\u2019s a structurally different kind of relevance than Islamabad has had in Washington for over twenty years.
\nThe security relationship didn\u2019t vanish alongside this pivot; it simply stopped being the only story. Look back further and the throughline is visible. Pakistan\u2019s handover of Sharifullah aka Jafar in 2025 remains the clearest recent evidence that counterterrorism cooperation still delivers concrete results Washington values. That cooperation continued into August 2026, when officials from both countries held the fourth round of their Counterterrorism Dialogue, reaffirming joint efforts against ISIS-K, Al-Qaeda, the TTP and the BLA. It is a lineup that reflects a real and documented resurgence of militant violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, not just diplomatic boilerplate. Pakistani officials have separately put the toll of two decades of counterterrorism operations at more than 90,000 lives and over $150 billion in losses. These numbers explain why security cooperation still carries weight domestically even as trade dominates the diplomatic headlines.
\nThe trade numbers arriving alongside all this are genuine, if modest. USTR estimates put total US-Pakistan goods and services trade at around $11.5 billion in 2025 \u2014 roughly $8.5 billion in goods, $2.9 billion in services, with DPM forecasting a climb towards $20 billion within five years. Compare that to Pakistan\u2019s trade with China, and this framing looks more like an opening bid than an achieved fact. The stronger signal is narrower: Pakistan\u2019s IT and ICT services exports grew 18.3 percent to $3.8 billion in FY25, growth that owes more to Pakistani software firms than to any Washington meeting.
\nWhat none of this year\u2019s announcements addresses directly is the elephant already in the room. Pakistan\u2019s deepest economic entanglement remains its deep relationship with China \u2013 notably the CPEC. Courting American mineral investment while managing Chinese capital is not, on its face, an issue Islamabad has to resolve immediately. But it is one that will eventually force a choice, or at least a clarification, and neither government has yet said out loud how the two relationships are meant to coexist. Until that\u2019s addressed, the recent reordering of priorities (minerals first, security still present, trade catching up) is a sequence worth watching, not yet a settled hierarchy.<\/p>\n
The writer is a freelance columnist who is an alumnus of QAU and FUI He can be reached at fa7263125@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Faisal Ahmad Washington\u2019s relationship with Islamabad used to run on a single track. Now, it\u2019s running on at least three, and the order in which this year\u2019s events unfolded says something about which one now leads. It started, fittingly, with diplomacy rather than defence. In February, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Secretary of State Marco […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13178],"class_list":["post-569571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article","tag-faisal-ahmad"],"yoast_head":"\n