Former PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said on Monday that both the government and the PTI, along with Imran Khan, need to show flexibility in order to create space for engagement to decrease the political friction in the country.

Fawad is one of the three former PTI leaders who say they have been engaging with the party’s incarcerated leadership to put an end to politics of confrontation as part of their political outreach initiative.

They also visited PTI leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi, after he was taken to a hospital in Lahore from prison, on Thursday, to convince him to join their campaign.

“I’ve said this from the first day, the government should move one step forward and the PTI and Imran Khan should move back one step so space is created,” said the former PTI leader while speaking during an interview on DawnNewsTV show ‘News Wise’.

He maintained that both sides would have to decide on the need to bring down the temperature, warning that if the PTI did not pursue engagement and talks, it would face similar treatment as the disbanding and ban on the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan.

“The government needs this, because whatever international successes they have gained are not translating into Pakistan … so both sides need the temperature to come down. We think the leaders of Lahore should play the role of a pivot and take this forward.”

Chaudhry added that the immediate need was to lower the political temperature, saying talks could not proceed if both sides could not even bear to see each other.

Defending his former party’s obstinacy against engagement in talks, he said it was also due to the behaviour of the government, which had made a policy of “crushing and sidelining” the opposition.

“The two ruling parties, the establishment and the PTI, are the four big players and the political temperature between them should come down. How will that happen? …you will have to give the leadership in Lahore’s jail the chance to talk to Imran Khan.”

He further said that the establishment and the government needed to decide whether the country needed a reduction in political temperature or not. “I am very hopeful they have this view too.”

Referring to the group’s recent activities, Chaudhry said they had a meeting of at least 45 minutes with Qureshi.

He added that the proposal being carried by the group was not even their own, instead pointing to a letter by incarcerated PTI leaders in Lahore earlier this year, which called for a reduction in political friction and encouraged engagement.

Chaudhry was not without criticism for the government, saying it had backed the PTI into a corner. “If you don’t engage with the PTI, the only way forward it has is to protest,” he said.

The former federal minister added that in such a situation, the PTI could lead a protest to Islamabad and resign from the National Assembly, while the government would attempt to impose governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which would be resisted by the party.

“Another event like November 26, 2024, will happen, and as a result of this, the tensions and political temperature in Pakistan will increase. The problem right now is that, we the people, living in Pakistan are being severely impacted by this,” he said, adding that the group had requested the incarcerated PTI leaders in Lahore that if there was no implementation of their earlier recommendation, it would lead to great loss for both the party and the government.

He also said the fact that the group was allowed to meet the incarcerated PTI leadership in Kot Lakpat jail was an encouraging sign.

“Senior government ministers called me and appreciated the effort,” he said, pointing to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar’s welcoming of the development in particular.

“Senior PTI leadership also called and said that this is the only way.”

Rescuers and relatives searched knee-deep in water for the body of one-year-old Zara. She’d been swept away by flash floods; the bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been found days earlier.

“We suddenly saw a lot of water. I climbed up to the roof and urged them to join me,” Arshad, Zara’s grandfather, said, showing the BBC the dirt road where they were taken from him in the village of Sambrial in northern Punjab in August.

His family tried to join him, but too late. The powerful current washed away all six of them.

Every year, monsoon season brings deadly floods in Pakistan.

This year it began in late June, and within three months, floods had killed more than 1,000 people. At least 6.9  million were affected, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs, OCHA.

The South Asian nation is struggling with the devastating consequences of climate change, despite emitting just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To witness its effects, the BBC travelled from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south for three months. In every province, climate change was having a different impact.

There was one element in common, though. The poorest suffer most.

We met people who’d lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones – and they were resigned to going through it all again in the next monsoon.

Lakebursts and flash floods

Monsoon floods started in the north, with global warming playing out in its most familiar form in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.

Amid the high peaks of the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush, there are more than 7,000 glaciers. But due to rising temperatures, they are melting.

The result can be catastrophic: meltwater turns into glacial lakes which can suddenly burst. Thousands of villages are at risk.

This summer hundreds of homes were destroyed and roads damaged by landslides and flash floods.

These “glacial lake outbursts” are hard to warn against. The area is remote and mobile service poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are trying to improve an early warning system, which often doesn’t work because of the mountainous terrain.

Community is a powerful asset. When shepherd Wasit Khan woke up to rushing waters, with trailing chunks of ice and debris, he ran to an area with a better signal. He began warning as many villagers as he could.

“I told everyone to leave their belongings, leave the house, take their wives, children and elderly people and get away,” he told BBC Urdu’s Muhammad Zubair.

Thanks to him, dozens were saved.

The danger took a different form in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In Gadoon, the BBC found hundreds of villagers digging through piles of rocks with their bare hands.

A cloudburst had caused a flash flood early in the morning, a local official said. That happens when a sudden updraft in humid, moist air leads to a heavy and localised burst of rain. The current washed away several homes and triggered a landslide.

Men from neighbouring villages rushed over to help, which was invaluable – but not enough. The excavators the villagers desperately needed were trapped in flooded roads, some blocked by massive rocks.

“Nothing will happen until the machines arrive,” one man told the BBC.

Then a silence suddenly blanketed the area. Dozens of men stood still in one corner. The bodies of two children, soaked in dark mud, were pulled from under the rubble, and carried away.

Scenes like this played out across the province, with rescuers delayed due to uprooted trees and major infrastructure being destroyed. A helicopter carrying aid crashed in the bad weather, claiming the lives of all crew on board.

Building on Pakistan’s floodplains

In villages and cities, millions have settled around rivers and streams, areas prone to flooding. Pakistan’s River Protection Act – which prohibits building within 200 ft (61m) of a river or its tributaries – was meant to solve that issue. But for many it’s simply too costly to settle elsewhere.

Illegal construction makes matters worse.

Climate scientist Fahad Saeed blames this on local corruption and believes officials are failing to enforce the law. He spoke to the BBC in Islamabad, next to a half-built, four-storey concrete building as big as a car park – and right by a stream that he saw flood this summer, killing a child.

“Just a few kilometres from parliament and still such things happen in Pakistan,” he says, visibly frustrated. “It’s because of misgovernance, the role of the government is to be a watchdog.”

Former climate minister Senator Sherry Rehman, who chairs the climate committee in Pakistan’s Senate, calls it ”graft”, or simply “looking the other way” when permissions are given for construction in vulnerable areas.

The country’s breadbasket submerged

By late August, further south in the province of Punjab, floods had submerged 4,500 villages, overwhelming “Pakistan’s breadbasket”, in a country that can’t always afford to import enough food.

For the first time, three rivers – the Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab – flooded simultaneously, triggering the largest rescue operation in decades.

“It was the most important anomaly,” said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, the chief risk officer for the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In Punjab’s capital, Lahore, the impact on wealthier and poorer communities was stark. The gated community of Park View City was inundated by the Ravi river, making its prized streets impossible to navigate. Residents of luxury homes were forced to evacuate.

Surveying the damage, two local men, Abdullah and his father Gulraiz, were convinced water would be drained soon, thanks to the area’s property developer Aleem Khan, a federal minister.

“No problem, Aleem Khan will do it,” Gulraiz told the BBC.

But for residents in the poorer neighbourhood of Theme Park, the floods were crushing. One officer told the BBC they kept having to rescue people who swam back to their homes when the water levels dropped, desperate to salvage whatever they could. But then the water would rise, leaving them stranded.

We saw one man returning from his house, an inflatable donut resting on his hip.

Some residents were moved to tents provided by the Alkhidmat Foundation Pakistan. Sitting outside in the summer heat, Sumera was weeks away from giving birth. She was extremely thin.

“My doctor says I need two blood transfusions this week,” she said as she tried to keep hold of her toddler, Arsh.

Nearby, Ali Ahmad was balancing a small kitten he rescued from the floods on his shoulder. The boy was one of the few who had a mattress to sleep on.

By the end of monsoon season, the floods had displaced more than 2.7 million people in Punjab, the UN said, and damaged more than one million hectares of farmland.

Further south in Multan district, always hit hard by floods, the scale of the humanitarian crisis became even clearer, with tents lining dirt roads and highways.

Access to healthcare was already a challenge in rural areas of Pakistan, but once the floods hit, the challenge was unbearable for many women we met.

BBC Urdu’s Tarhub Asghar met two sisters-in-law, both nine months pregnant. A doctor had warned them they weren’t drinking enough water. They raised a bottle to explain. The water was completely brown.

The search for solutions

Some are trying different solutions.

Architect Yasmeen Lari has designed what she calls “climate-resilient houses” in dozens of villages. In Pono, near Hyderabad, women showed the BBC huts they’d built themselves – a large circular building on wooden stilts. Dr Lari calls it their training centre and says families can move their belongings there and shelter.

But Dr Lari argues building an entire village on stilts would be unfeasible and too expensive. Instead, she says her designs ensure the roofs don’t collapse, and that by using natural materials such as bamboo and lime concrete, the homes can be rebuilt quickly by the villagers themselves.

Pakistan has reached a point where “it’s not about saving buildings; it’s about saving lives,” she says.

This is the reality for Pakistan. All the climate scientists and politicians the BBC spoke to warn of an increasingly worrying future.

“Every year the monsoon will become more and more aggressive,” Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah at the NDMA said. “Every year, there will be a new surprise for us.”

As the country faces the growing and ever-changing challenges posed by climate change, in which the poorest are often the worst affected, there is one refrain from people returning to homes likely to flood next year: “I have nowhere else to go.”

By Akhtar Hussain Sandhu

The PAK-AFGHANdialogue held at Istanbul could not be successful as desired by both the countries, Pakistan’s federal minister, Mr. Atta Tarar, revealed the news through his statement on 29 and then 30 October. Both agreed to continue the ceasefire and further talks to deal with the terrorist groups existing in Afghanistan. This gathering in Istanbul was a continuation of the talks concluded in Doha (Qatar), which had resulted in a ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Taliban leaders acknowledged the open secret that the incumbent regime in Afghanistan is sponsoring the terrorist activities in Pakistan. Yet the Pakistani delegation showed the world that Pakistan is a pacifist state seeking an effective action against the terrorist groups within Afghanistan. The dialogues were at the verge of failure but both sat again and concluded agreed points of meeting on 6 November 2025. If transit trade remains blocked, then Pakistani pressure will sustain otherwise weapons will be imported through Karachi by Afghanistan. Hopefully, tension will dwindle down soon because the Afghan delegation did not repeat the Durand Line and other issues in the last meetings. National Mobilization Front, a dissident group in Afghanistan, has declared if India support Taliban, they would support the Sikhs and Khalistan movement in India. Moreover, very important leaders of TTP have been killed by the Pakistani forces that shows the commitment to eliminate the terrorists from the Pakistani soil.

Pakistan moved only one major agenda item, that Afghanistan should not support the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other terrorist groups that have been launching suicide attacks against the military and civilians in Pakistan. This is the same demand that the Talibans had already promised in the Doha agreement. Now, in the recent talks organized in Istanbul, the Taliban leaders confessed the presence of the terrorists of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other banned terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, which are being sponsored and facilitated by the Taliban regime. Pakistan had closed Chaman, Torkham, and other borders.

No transit trade is allowed, and repatriation of the so-called Afghan refugees is in progress. Hundreds of trucks are parked due to the persistent security concerns by Pakistan over the terrorist attacks facilitated by Afghanistan. All the terrorist organizations of Baluchistan, KPK, and Punjab are involved in immoral, illegal, and un-Islamic activities with the help of the Taliban regime. They must know that state affairs don’t not function on religious basis but on ‘National Interest.’ Therefore, Afghanistan will have to respect international laws and cosmopolitan ethics.

Afghanistan is working as the Indian proxy that Pakistan cannot tolerate at any cost. Turkey and Qatar played a sincere role in bringing the Talibans and Pakistan to the table, but the Indian-backed Kabul regime did not let the talks end with a positive result. The agreement was approaching a successful end, but Kabul, through the delegation, tabled a new demand for Pakistani help if the USA attacks. This was an immature gesture because Istanbul talks were a part of the agenda already concluded at Doha, in which no such point was a part of the agenda. The facilitators of the Muslim countries were surprised by the support of the terrorists and the erratic behavior of the Taliban delegation.

Significantly, the point of Islamic laws and Shariah propagated by the Talibans is worth discussing that since the skirmishes started on the Pak-Afghan borders or even before, the so-called advocates of Shariah have been hiding behind the falsified narrative and utter lies constantly. They adopted the same lies during the meeting at Istanbul, but were embarrassed when the Pakistani delegation presented undeniable proof and argued in the form of audio and video recordings. The real followers of Islam do not tell lies, do not kill innocent people, do not desecrate and mutilate human corpses, and do not conspire against Muslims with the help of non-Muslim state.

The world is mostly witnessing ‘war diplomacy’ while the Talibans always adopted ‘terrorism economy’ and ‘violence diplomacy’, which means to use terrorists as bargaining chips or tools. As compensation, they beg money from different countries. Pakistan knows this false show and the Taliban’s nuisance value; therefore, on the demand of money for the settlement of the terrorists far away from the Durand Line, Pakistan simply refused to pay. Pakistan had already mortified and crushed their arrogance, haughtiness, and fake image of being warriors within a few hours. Even Pakistan seems ready to revise the false curricula of Pakistan Studies and history in which the marauders are glorified.

Pakistan shared the stance vividly that if any terrorist attack in Pakistan is linked to the Afghan areas, Pakistan would hit Kabul and other main cities of Afghanistan. The engagement policy of General Asim Munir has stamped how Pakistan’s Law Enforcement Agencies would react to the anti-Pakistan conspiracies. On the failure of the Istanbul talks, the Talibans threatened to attack Islamabad, although they lack an air force which means they will use terrorists and suicide attacks. The terrorists must be clear that Islamabad will retaliate fiercely and protect the borders and ensure the security of the civilians.

However, Pakistan must repatriate the Afghan refugees as soon as possible. We hear that some of the policemen are taking bribes to show that the Afghans either have been repatriated or disappeared somewhere. The soil of Pakistan is more sacred than any other neighboring land, and the people of Pakistan are more important than anyone else on the earth; therefore, the state must take stern actions against the terrorists, traitors, corrupt officials, smugglers, terrorists and their sympathizers. Pakistan right now enjoys a soft image, effective establishment, and powerful military leadership at the international level. Therefore, this is the right time to root out the anti-Pakistan extremist elements and terrorism from the country.