Dr. Ikram ul Haq & Engineer Arshad H Abbasi
Pakistan and India sprang from the same subcontinent, sharing rivers, soil, and memory. Yet for 78 years since partition, these nuclear-armed neighbors have drifted to opposite shores, their estrangement deepening with each passing decade. Skirmishes that could have swollen into a full-scale nuclear war after World War II were averted—often, we contend, because the United States stepped in. But another war has raged outside the headlines for over three decades: an unseen, lethal war of economic espionage. With a bleeding heart, we record this Op-Ed as a warning to the global community and a reckoning for those who still doubt that the battlefield is now the balance sheet, the factory floor, and the policy file.
This is no conspiracy theory; it is a reading of the record and the rhetoric. We believe India has penetrated Pakistan’s policy and decision-making architecture—quietly, persistently—through a powerful, foreign-funded entity operating from our capital since the early 1990s. Its public-facing campaigns and publications, in our view, form an undeniable paper trail of a strategy to hobble two pillars of Pakistan’s economic resilience: cheap, clean energy and textiles (often over 60% of our exports). In spirit and method, this entity is a one, desi “Lawrence of Arabia” as mole of RAW—a Trojan horse wrapped in the language of environment, climate change; a patient operator turning Pakistan, one decision at a time, into a begging bowl.
The doctrine that frames this contest is not imagined. Consider the strategic thesis attributed to Indian spymasters and discussed under titles like Geo-Politics of South Asian Covert Action, overseen by figures such as B. Raman (former additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat and former Deputy Chief of RAW). Its core argument is chillingly clear: India must move beyond defence and diplomacy and shake Pakistan from within—not by targeting its people, but by prying at the iron grip of its army, bureaucracy, but the target is the economy, the institutions said to anchor hostility.
The playbook is explicit: psychological warfare, disinformation campaigns, and precision operations against Pakistan’s soft underbelly—financial hubs like Karachi, ports, communication lines, and emblematic assets such as large dams.
The objective is not dismemberment, but to cripple the economy, rattle institutions, and force leaders into chaos and recalculation. Executed well, this covert storm would stretch security forces thin, kindle paranoia at the core, and splinter the military-bureaucratic fortress. The endgame? Flip the proxy script—force Islamabad to fight inside its borders while New Delhi claims composure at the diplomatic table.
Into this doctrine stepped the local mole, a slick, foreign-funded actor whose influence seeped into policy, media, climate change, and—most disastrously—regulation. We argue its twin targets were deliberate: hydropower and cotton first.
After the triumphs of Mangla and Tarbela, Pakistan’s dams fell prey to a sinister campaign of economic espionage. India, draped in the rhetoric of climate and environment, unleashed stooges to corrupt our debate, branding dams—once monuments of progress—as ecological disasters.
The truth is stark: hydropower emits just 23 gCO₂-eq/kWh, cleaner than solar’s 48, and leagues ahead of gas at 490 and coal at 820, with only wind and nuclear lower. Beyond clean power, dams promise irrigation, flood protection, and energy sovereignty. Yet disinformation killed this lifeline, stripping Pakistan not only of cheap energy but of resilience, stability, and independence.
Yet beginning in the 1990s, a polished campaign in Pakistan’s capital framed dams as anti-environment, hydro as dirty, and “big water” as colonial relic—a discursive switch that just happened to funnel Pakistan toward imported gas and oil. The consequence? Our domestic gas reserves dwindled; cheap hydro was delayed or shelved; and the grid was lashed to imported fuel.
We now carry an albatross of approximately US$40 billion in power-sector circular debt, while LNG imports—we contend ≈ $50 billion largely to keep lights on—drain scarce foreign exchange. Imagine: had the mid-1990s hydro pipeline been built on schedule, Pakistan could have met peak demand with clean, dispatchable water power—and much of this fiscal haemorrhage might never have begun.
The textile front was no less brutal. Once a cotton exporter, Pakistan now imports over US$2 billion of cotton annually. The Desi Lawrence, we argue, made cotton not just an agronomic issue, but a moral panic. Pamphlets in local languages warned of threats to women’s fertility from cotton work—weaponizing our deepest social anxieties to soften the ground for a pivot away from cotton.
Meanwhile, the climate file was sharpened into a sword: heatwaves, erratic rainfall, floods, and droughts were marshaled as proof that cotton is no longer viable; pest surges (whitefly, pink bollworm) were spotlighted; water-intensity was hammered—until many districts quietly shifted to sugarcane, arguably the most water-hungry major crop on earth.
Thus, in the name of water and women, we traded a fiber aligned with our installed industry and export capacity for a crop that depletes aquifers faster, yields fewer export dollars, and locks us deeper into food-water-energy stress. Meanwhile, in India’s neighbouring states—Rajasthan, East Punjab, and Gujarat—cotton production has multiplied. Is climate change targeting only the Land of the Pure?
India, through economic espionage and its local actors, weaponized climate change to strike at Pakistan’s two lifelines—cotton and hydropower. Cotton was branded unviable, hydropower condemned as destructive, and policymakers misled into abandoning their strengths.
As the trap closed, global price shocks strangled farmers, lack of credit and research stifled adaptation, and propaganda pushed false ‘solutions’—diversify out of cotton, rely less on dams, chase empty resilience. What appeared progressive was sabotage: our competitive edge was dismantled, leaving Pakistan dependent on costly imports of both LNG and fibre.
What kept the blade sharp was, in our view, regulatory capture. Over time, the influence of this entity reached deep into the arteries of the state—National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) in power, Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) in oil and gas, and beyond—where technical thresholds, tariff logics, and procurement choices can quietly bend a nation’s fate.
A procurement pause here, an environmental objection there; an “interim” tariff that turns permanent; a capacity charge renegotiated against the public interest; a standards tweak that sidelines local engineering; a licensure delay that kills a hydro feasibility just long enough for the fuel markets to tighten. None of these acts is theatrical. All are catastrophic in aggregate. This is the Trojan horse we failed to see: an “advisory” footprint that became a policy fingerprint—everywhere.
We mourn not only the cunning of external hands but the compliance—witting or unwitting—inside our own house. The cost is incalculable: a textile engine forced to buy foreign cotton and bleed margins; a power system starved of hydro’s cheap baseload and trapped in fuel shocks; a sovereign state paying for energy in dollars it doesn’t earn because its export spine has been bent. Pakistan, once poised to electrify with water and export with fiber, now begs for fuel and raw cotton.
To the global community, we say: you once intervened to stop nuclear war—will you now confront the covert economics that can destroy nations without a shot fired? Let Pakistan breathe, free from the dirty tricks of economic espionage. Pakistan may lack the capacity to repel these assaults, but we must be allowed to build modern reservoirs for power, irrigation, and flood control; to restore cotton production; and to add value so we export strength, not volatility.
Our regulators—NEPRA, OGRA, and others—must be purged of shadow influence and rebuilt on transparency. And above all, the local actor who enabled this sabotage must face trial at the International Criminal Court—for waging economic war on a nuclear-armed nation.
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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.
Engineer Arshad H. Abbasi, water and climate change expert, is co-founder of Energy Excellence Centres at NUST and UET Peshawar.