Pakistan: A failed state trying to sell diplomatic image to world

When a former Singaporean diplomat told a room of international journalists in July 2026 that Pakistan was “teetering on the brink of failure”, the remark travelled quickly. Bilahari Kausikan, who served as Permanent Secretary of Singapore’s Foreign Ministry and now chairs the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, was not speaking as a partisan. He was answering a Pakistani journalist’s question about the future of the latter’s own country. His argument was simple: Islamabad had recently won headlines for a ‘diplomatic reprieve’ in Washington, but headlines of diplomatic wins do not feed people. The problems, he said, are internal, a mismanaged economy and jihadist movements allowed to grow out of hand. Pakistan’s own data supports Kausikan’s assessment. Let us examine what the symptoms of state failure actually look like when measured against Pakistan’s own official records.