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A strange paradox defines the Pakistani dream. A university professor moves to London and drives Uber. A civil engineer in Riyadh shares a cramped room with seven others while working as a site assistant. Back home, these same men are celebrated with their remittances buying property, securing private school fees, and moving their families up Pakistan’s socioeconomic ladder. Abroad, they sink while at home they rise.
This contradiction is not just about individuals. It is Pakistan’s place in the world. Globally, Pakistan plays the role of the laborer who supplies troops in foreign wars, sends peacekeepers to UN missions and provides the manpower that sustains Western economies and security structures. But the recognition, dignity, and real decision-making power remain firmly in Western hands which are concentrated especially in NATO and the UN Security Council (Kaplan, 2007; Akram, 2001).
As we zoom out further, we see the Muslim world controls 70% of oil and gas reserves and sits astride strategic trade routes (OIC SESRIC, 2022). Yet the ICJ and ICC routinely sideline Muslim causes and vetoes the justice for Palestine and Kashmir at the UN bloc (Akande, 2020). The OIC issues statements, the Arab League fragments, and the Baghdad Pact collapsed under external pressure (Husain, 2019). We rise only in our own circles, never on the global stage.
The Pakistan–Saudi defense pact is a chance to rewrite this script. For once, we are not laboring for others’ security but laying the foundation for our own. A Muslim Union that would function not as another symbolic forum but as an alliance with teeth calling for collective defense, economic leverage, and political sovereignty.
NATO itself began with just 12 states bound by necessity, not perfection (Dinan, 2014). The EU was once unthinkable among nations that had slaughtered each other for centuries. Yet unity came because survival demanded it. The same logic now faces the Muslim world.
The question is no longer whether we can afford to build such a bloc. The question is whether we can afford not to.
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