Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan has entered the new year in a state of relative calm after 30 turbulent months marked by volatile politics, contentious elections and an economy on the verge of collapse.
As domestic politics stabilizes and the economy hopes for a turnaround in South Asia’s second-most populous country, foreign policy and security challenges are likely to become the country’s most pressing concerns this year.
Analysts are predicting a difficult 2025 for Pakistan as the country navigates its relations with its immediate neighbors, allies and adversaries around the world, as well as the United States, where Donald Trump is set to return to power later this month.
Most of Pakistan’s foreign policy and security challenges arise from its neighborhood, particularly Afghanistan in the west and arch-rival India in the east.
Violence by armed groups and rebels intensified across Pakistan after the Afghan Taliban captured Kabul in 2021. In 2024, armed attacks claimed the lives of nearly 700 police personnel, making it one of the deadliest years in a country of 240 million people.
The attacks were primarily carried out by the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), an armed group that views the Afghan Taliban as its ideological twin. Separate rebel attacks targeted sites related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $62 billion mega-project that has brought Islamabad and Beijing closer than ever as political and economic allies.
Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, a U.S.-based nonprofit, and an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, says Pakistan is facing the “biggest” national security challenge “in at least a decade and possibly since 1990s”.
“Pakistan has little strategic choice other than to fix its economy and improve its relations with other major powers and regional neighbors. This will likely require years of work and it is not clear whether Pakistan has years to complete this work before the house falls down,” Clary told Al Jazeera.
Here is an overview of the countries that will be the focus of Islamabad’s foreign policy this year:
China
Pakistani authorities often tout their friendship with China as “deeper than the oceans, higher than the mountains.” But 2024 revealed cracks in this relationship.
The attacks on Chinese citizens and interests culminated in a rare public rebuke from Beijing’s envoy in Islamabad. “It is unacceptable that we are attacked twice in just six months,” Jiang Zaidong said at an event in Islamabad in October.
Muhammad Faisal, a foreign policy expert on China, warns that while China will continue to provide financial support to Pakistan, further expansion of the CPEC project in the country is unlikely.
“Pakistan needs to deftly deal with growing pressure from Beijing for a ‘Joint Security Mechanism’ and essentially station Chinese security personnel on Pakistani territory, which would in turn make it a target for militants complicating existing security measures,” Faisal told Al Jazeera.
Chinese soldiers manning the country’s projects on Pakistani soil would represent an admission of Islamabad’s security deficiencies, increase the risk that Chinese nationals will be targeted and also heighten the politically sensitive possibility that Chinese militants will kill Pakistani nationals.
Meanwhile, experts also fear that Trump’s hostile stance toward China could prompt Beijing to demand public support from Pakistan, which will then be forced to walk a diplomatic tightrope to avoid angering Washington, an old ally.
Trump has consistently taken a tough stance on China, with a trade war between the two economic powers erupting in his first term. In his second term, the US leader promised to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese imports.
“But with Pakistan not high on the Trump administration’s international agenda, there is a silver lining. However, insecurity is the common denominator of both Pakistan’s challenges with China,” Faisal said.
Kamran Bokhari, senior director of the U.S.-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said China’s frustration with Pakistan stems from the fact that its heavy investments in CPEC yielded little return. He added that China’s predicament could work to the US’s advantage.
“China is already quite disappointed with Pakistan and the relationship has been strained for some time. But Beijing is in a bind because it is knee-deep in Pakistan thanks to billions in CPEC investments without reaping any benefits. So it is good for the US that China is in a quagmire in Pakistan,” Bokhari told Al Jazeera.
The United States
Pakistan’s relations with the US date back to its independence from British rule and emergence as a new nation in 1947. However, relations between Islamabad and Washington have largely revolved around how Pakistan supported US policies in the region, particularly in Afghanistan, where the Soviet invasion took place in the 1970s and 1980s, or the US-led “war on terror after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
With the Afghan Taliban back in power in Kabul, the strategic partnership between Pakistan and the US in the South Asian region has dwindled. While the US is now investing less in Afghanistan, Pakistan has gradually turned to China for economic, military and technological reasons.
Hassan Abbas, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, believes Pakistan needs to “carefully manage” its relations with the US amid tensions with China and India. He says that “although nervousness on the Pakistani side is obvious,” dramatic changes in the relationship are unlikely.
“Security issues and regional challenges such as instability in Afghanistan,” Abbas told Al Jazeera, “are likely to dominate bilateral interactions.” Abbas is also the author of The Return of Taliban: Afghanistan after Americans Left.
Bokhari said Pakistan remains a low priority for the US as the US needs to address more pressing global issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the various conflicts in the Middle East.
“At the moment I don’t see any significant increase in tensions between the two countries and Pakistan is playing its cards very safely. “The perception in DC about Pakistan is that it is a weak, chaotic state that needs to sort out its own affairs first before anything else happens,” he said.
India
India remains the biggest foreign policy puzzle for Pakistan.
While there is limited interaction in multilateral forums, relations have been virtually frozen for years. Tensions over Kashmir further escalated after New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its limited autonomy in 2019, sparking strong condemnation from Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan control parts of Kashmir but claim the entire Himalayan region, making it one of the world’s longest and bloodiest military conflicts.
“The asymmetry with India is becoming increasingly clear, and Pakistan has few options to force India to take it seriously without jeopardizing other Pakistani foreign policy goals,” analyst Clary told Al Jazeera, adding that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “not very ideological” and “I have a lot of interest” in rapprochement with Pakistan and “think this is impracticable at a time of domestic instability” in Pakistan.
Abdul Basit, a former Pakistani envoy to India, sees the Kashmir issue as an ongoing stalemate that requires behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “India has shown no willingness to be flexible after the constitutional amendment,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the Modi government’s scrapping of Article 370, the law that granted Indian-administered Kashmir its partial autonomy.
Given India’s rapprochement with the West, particularly the US, over its common enemy China, Basit believes Islamabad must find ways to engage with New Delhi.
“Otherwise we will always end up in a stalemate and will never be able to get our relationship back on the path to normal relationships. That, for me, is the crux of the matter when it comes to India,” the retired envoy said.
However, Bokhari of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy believes it could be India that could be in the US’s crosshairs this year and come under pressure over its rivalry with China.
“India has much closer and practical ties with Iran, where it is building a port. It also buys oil from Russia, which is waging war in Ukraine. So they (India) have a greater chance of being pressured by the new (Trump) administration,” he said.
For Pakistan to attract U.S. attention, Bokhari says it must provide strategic value, as it did during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and during the U.S. wars after 9/11.
“If you want U.S. attention, you have to offer them something that could significantly pique U.S. interest, and only then can you get attention,” he said. “It wasn’t that the US liked Pakistan or became best friends, it was just that Pakistan offered them a target.”
Iran
The year 2024 proved to be a disastrous year for Iran as its geopolitical interests in the Middle East suffered heavy losses and Israel even launched direct attacks on its territories on several occasions.
But the year began with Iran launching attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, citing an armed group called Jaish al-Adl as a threat to its security in border areas. The attack triggered a swift military retaliation from Pakistan. But tensions between the predominantly Muslim neighbors did not escalate, and Tehran resorted to diplomacy to resolve the issue.
Umer Karim, a researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, expects the “uneasy rapprochement” to continue and new challenges to emerge with Trump’s return to the White House.
Karim warns that worsening relations between Pakistan and Iran could worsen border security, emboldening Baloch separatists who are reportedly hiding in Iran. The Baloch rebels have been fighting for their own homeland for decades.
“Pakistan will seek positive cooperation with Iran to avoid further hostilities amid increasing domestic violence,” Karim said.
