Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan entered a new year in a state of relative calm after tumultuous 30 months, marked by volatile politics, a controversial election, and an economy teetering on the verge of collapse.
As domestic politics stabilises and economy hopes for a turnaround in South Asia’s second-most populous nation, foreign policy and security challenges are likely to emerge as the country’s most pressing concerns this year.
Analysts predict a tough 2025 for Pakistan, as it manages ties with its immediate neighbours, allies and adversaries across the world, as well as with 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 due to its neighbourhood, mainly Afghanistan to its west and archrival India on the east.
Violence by armed groups and rebels intensified across Pakistan after the Afghan Taliban seized Kabul in 2021. In 2024, armed attacks claimed the lives of nearly 700 law enforcement personnel, making it one of the deadliest years in a country of 240 million people.
The attacks were primarily carried out by the Pakistan Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), an armed group that considers the Afghan Taliban its ideological twin. Separate rebel attacks targeted sites related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $62bn megaproject that has brought Islamabad and Beijing closer than ever as political and economic allies.
Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at Stimson Center, a US-based nonprofit, and an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, says Pakistan faces its “most severe” national security challenge “in at least a decade and possibly since the 1990s”.
“Pakistan has no grand strategic choice other than to get its economic house in order and repair its relationships with other great powers and regional neighbours. This likely entails years of work, and it is not clear that Pakistan has years to do that work before the house tumbles in,” Clary told Al Jazeera.
Here’s a lowdown on the countries that will be the focus of Islamabad’s foreign policy this year:
China
Pakistani authorities frequently tout their “deeper than the oceans, taller than the mountains” friendship with China. But 2024 revealed cracks in that relationship.
Attacks on Chinese citizens and interests culminated, forcing a rare public rebuke by Beijing’s envoy to Islamabad. “It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in only 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, any further expansion of the CPEC project in the country is unlikely.
“Pakistan must skillfully navigate mounting pressure from Beijing for a ‘Joint Security Mechanism’, essentially putting Chinese security personnel on Pakistani territory which, in turn, would make them the target of 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 failures, increase the risk of Chinese nationals being targeted, and also amplify the politically sensitive possibility of Chinese fighters killing Pakistani nationals.
Meanwhile, experts also fear that Trump’s adversarial stance towards China may push Beijing to demand public support from Pakistan, which will then be forced to walk a diplomatic tightrope in order to avoid annoying Washington, an old ally.
Trump has taken a consistently hardline position on China, with his first term seeing a trade war between the two economic powers. In his second stint, the US leader has pledged to impose up to 60 percent tariffs on Chinese imports.
“But since Pakistan isn’t high on Trump administration’s international agenda, there is a silver lining. Yet, uncertainty is the common denominator of both of Pakistan’s challenges with China,” Faisal said.
Kamran Bokhari, senior director at the US-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said China’s frustrations with Pakistan stem from its extensive investments in the CPEC yielding few returns. 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 terse for some time. But Beijing is in a fix because it is knee-deep in Pakistan, thanks to CPEC investment of billions, without getting any benefit from it. So, China being in a quagmire in Pakistan is good for the US,” Bokhari told Al Jazeera.
The United States
Pakistan’s relations with the US go back to its independence from British rule and emergence as a new nation in 1947. But Islamabad-Washington ties have mostly pivoted on how Pakistan aided US policies in the region, mainly in Afghanistan, which saw the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, or the US-led “war on terror” following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
With the Afghan Taliban back in power in Kabul, the Pakistan-US strategic partnership in the South Asian region has dwindled. While the US is now less invested in Afghanistan, Pakistan has gradually moved towards China for economic, military and technological needs.
Hassan Abbas, professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, believes Pakistan must “carefully navigate” its ties with the US amid tensions with China and India. He says “while nervousness is evident” on Pakistan’s part, dramatic changes in the relationship appear 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, which has more pressing global issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the several Middle East conflicts to tackle.
“Right now, I don’t see any tensions rising to significant levels between the two countries and Pakistan is playing its cards very safely. In DC, the perception about Pakistan is that it is a weak, messy state which needs to figure out its own business first before anything else,” he said.
India
India remains the biggest foreign policy conundrum for Pakistan.
While limited interactions occur at multilateral forums, relations have been practically frozen for years. Tensions over Kashmir further intensified after New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its limited autonomy in 2019, triggering a strong condemnation by Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan rule over parts of Kashmir, but claim the Himalayan region in its entirety, making it one of the world’s longest and bloodiest military conflicts.
“The asymmetry with India is increasingly stark, and Pakistan has few options to compel India to take it seriously that don’t endanger other Pakistani foreign policy goals,” analyst Clary told Al Jazeera, adding that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “little ideological interest” in rapprochement with Pakistan and “sees it as impractical during a period of domestic instability” in Pakistan.
Abdul Basit, a former Pakistani envoy to India, views the Kashmir issue as a continuing deadlock requiring behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “India has shown no willingness for flexibility 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.
With India getting closer to the West, mainly the US, over their common enemy in China, Basit thinks Islamabad must find ways to engage with New Delhi.
“Otherwise, we will keep moving from one stalemate to the next and never be able to put our relationship on a trajectory of building normal relations. 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 thinks it could be India that might be in the US crosshairs this year and find itself under pressure over its rivalry with China.
“India has much closer and practical ties with Iran, where it is building a port. It is also buying oil from Russia, which is waging a war in Ukraine. So they [India] have a bigger chance of being put under pressure by the incoming [Trump] administration,” he said.
For Pakistan to attract US attention, according to Bokhari, it must offer a strategic value as it did during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and during the post-9/11 US wars.
“If you want US attention, you have to offer them something that could significantly generate an interest for the US, and only then you can get attention,” he said. “It wasn’t that the US liked Pakistan or became best friends, it was just that Pakistan provided a purpose.”
Iran
The year 2024 turned out to be a cataclysmic year for Iran, as it saw its geopolitical interests in the Middle East suffer heavy losses and Israel even launching direct attacks on its territories on several occasions.
But the year began with Iran launching attacks inside Pakistan’s Balochistan province, citing an armed group called Jaish al-Adl as a threat to its security in border areas. The attack prompted a swift military retaliation by Pakistan. But the tensions between the mainly Muslim neighbours did not escalate, with Tehran resorting to diplomacy to resolve the issue.
Umer Karim, researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, foresees the “uneasy rapprochement” continuing, as well as the emergence of new challenges with Trump’s return to the White House.
Karim warns that a deterioration in Pakistan-Iran ties could worsen border security, emboldening Baloch separatists who are reported to have hideouts in Iran. The Baloch rebels have been fighting for decades for a separate homeland.
“Pakistan will pursue positive engagement with Iran to avoid further antagonism amid rising domestic violence,” said Karim.