Pakistan imperils its IMF rescue as Afghanistan border violence rages

2026-03-07 - 06:05

Pakistan can ill afford to go to war. Neither can Afghanistan. Yet here they are, trading blows across one of South Asia’s most combustible borders – just as a team of International Monetary Fund inspectors arrived in Islamabad to decide on the country’s next financial lifeline. The inspectors had come for a third-round review of Pakistan’s economic recovery programme: the kind of visit that, if it went well, would unlock the next tranche of rescue funding and steady the nerves of skittish...