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.”

“We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” — Desmond Tutu

THERE is much talk of a ‘mental health crisis’ in Pakistan currently. Campaigns for ‘raising awareness and reducing stigma’ have been launched, encouraging people to talk about and seek help for mental health issues. There is a call for increased funding, upscaling mental health services and integrating mental health into primary care. These are all important and mental health definitely needs to be prioritised. But it is also equally important to reflect on what is driving this mental health crisis in Pakistan and what can be done about it.

The mental health crisis is not merely a health issue. It is a reflection of how power, inequality, and governance intersect to shape the emotional lives of millions of Pakistanis. The crisis is not a natural disaster but manmade — the outcome of 78 years of brutalisation of the people through social and economic injustice, political instability and structural poverty.

Pakistan’s history is defined by political turbulence. For almost half of its existence, Pakistan has had direct military rule and an indirect one even when there is a façade of civilian government. The events of the last three years, the stolen mandate, state violence and oppression, emasculation of the judiciary and parliament have all but eroded what little public trust there was in state institutions. This has serious psychological consequences. Pakistanis live in a permanent state of uncertainty. Political chaos is fuelling collective anxiety, cynicism, and a loss of civic sense. Fear and distrust have become national emotions.

For millions of Pakistanis, psychological suffering is inseparable from economic hardship. Rising inflation, unemployment and collapsing purchasing power has turned everyday life into a test of survival. When families cannot afford school fees or electricity bills, when people feel they cannot make ends meet, when savings evaporate overnight, mental distress is the natural outcome. Poverty is not only material deprivation; it is psychological violence inflicted by an unequal system.

Over 60 per cent of Pakistan’s population is under 30 years of age. What should be a demographic dividend has become a demographic crisis. Young people face shrinking opportunities, high unemployment, and an outdated education system disconnected from labour markets. Merit is sacrificed for nepotism and favouritism; hard work is replaced by connections. A society that denies its youth opportunity also denies them hope. No wonder every other young person wants to leave the country.

For millions of Pakistanis, psychological suffering is inseparable from economic hardship.

This suffering is not a ‘test of God’; it is political. The failure to provide social justice, address poverty, provide basic necessities, to control corruption — by neglecting social development — represents a deliberate abdication of state responsibility. The emotional cost is borne silently in our homes and workplaces across the country. This is criminal.

Among the many silent tragedies, Pakistan is the tragedy of suicides. The World Health Organisation estimates that between 13,000-20,000 people die by suicide each year and 10-20 times more attempt suicide, mostly by young people, under the age of 30 years. Poverty and unemployment stand out as major causes. This in a country that was created in the name of Islam, whose central tenet is social justice. We need to ask ourselves why then is the prohibition on suicides not having its deterrent effect in a country with 97pc Muslims.

This silence is strategic. To confront the mental health crisis would be to confront its root causes — poverty, inequality, corruption, and misgovernance. Instead, individuals are told to be patient, to pray, or to endure. Endurance, in this context, is not resilience; it is resignation. There is no greater insult than to label the silent suffering of Pakistanis as ‘resilience’. People have no choice but to struggle on.

Addressing the mental health crisis in Pakistan requires far more than setting up clinical services, increasing the number of psychiatrists and psychologists, setting up crisis helplines or offering interventions through apps or digital platforms. It demands a reordering of political and economic priorities. This means addressing the root causes of the mental distress of the population. We need truly representative governments, not one that is imposed on us. We need to curb corruption, which has eaten into the moral fabric of our society. We need to declare a national emergency in education in the country. Why are 25m children out of school in Pakistan? What is the future for them? We can spend billions of dollars over four days in a ‘war’ with one of our neighbours but cannot provide universal health coverage to our people.

Nearly one in three Pakistanis are estimated to be in need of mental healthcare. Yet, there is no separate budget for mental health and mental health spending is estimated to be less than 0.5pc of the national health budget. Whatever little is there, is eaten up by corruption and mismanagement. Access to psychiatric care remains confined to a few major cities, where it is largely unaffordable for the vast majority.

Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change has added a devastating dimension to the mental distress of its population. The 2022 floods displaced over 30m people, destroying homes, livelihoods, and communities. It was replayed in the recent floods in Punjab and KP. Many survivors continue to experience post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression — yet mental health remains absent from national disaster response and recovery plans. A nation’s true strength is measured not by the size of its economy or its armed forces, but by peace of mind of its citizens. Until Pakistan learns to prioritise the mental well-being of its people as a central pillar of its policies, our crisis of the mind will remain, silently but unmistakably, of our own making.

The writer is a consultant psychiatrist.

[email protected]

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2025