Minerals, militants, US-made guns: Why Trump’s bet on Munir is set to fail

The blast that tore done a Shia mosque connected the borderline of Islamabad connected Friday was not lone an enactment of wide murder. It was besides a reminder of the limits of powerfulness successful a state whose generals talk confidently astir security, minerals, and strategical partnerships, adjacent arsenic the crushed beneath them remains unstable.

Driving the news

A termination bombing astatine a Shia mosque connected the outskirts of Islamabad that killed much than 30 has jolted Pakistan’s superior and underscored a deeper occupation for the country’s leadership: the state’s inability to warrant information adjacent astatine the bosom of power.The Islamic State claimed work for the attack, which Pakistani authorities accidental progressive a bomber who opened occurrence earlier detonating an explosive vest.

Interior curate Mohsin Naqvi said 4 suspects- including an alleged mastermind - were arrested aft raids successful Peshawar and Nowshera, adding astatine a property conference, “Yesterday’s termination onslaught has rattled us.”

A speedy drawback up connected Munir's minerals

Pakistan has offered Washington a glittering bargain: entree to immoderate of the world’s richest untapped deposits of copper and different captious minerals astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile the United States is hopeless to loosen China’s grip connected the planetary proviso chain.

Yet the committedness that Field Marshal Asim Munir carried into the Oval Office is colliding with a brutal world connected the crushed - an insurgency successful Balochistan and the occidental borderlands that is progressively amended armed, amended coordinated, and, paradoxically, equipped with weapons primitively supplied by the United States.In December, the US Export-Import Bank approved $1.25 cardinal successful financing to enactment improvement of the Reko Diq task successful southwestern Balochistan, described by Canadian miner Barrick arsenic the world’s largest undeveloped copper reserve.

Reko Diq, 1 of the world’s largest undeveloped gold-copper deposits, is structured arsenic a associated venture: Barrick holds 50%, 3 Pakistani national state-owned enterprises collectively ain 25%, and the remaining 25% belongs to the Government of Balochistan.In parallel, Pakistani officials person been touting up to $8 trillion successful imaginable reserves of copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and different strategical minerals. For President Donald Trump, who has placed assets acquisition astatine the halfway of US overseas policy, the transportation has been compelling.But conscionable arsenic Washington leans in, Pakistan’s information situation is deteriorating. Along the Afghanistan borderline and crossed Balochistan’s mineral belt, militants are operating with US-made rifles, night-vision equipment, and long-range capabilities near down aft the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Kabul, a CNN study said.

The result: a assets accidental that looks transformative connected insubstantial but progressively untenable successful practice.

The large picture

Pakistan’s mineral diplomacy collides with a deteriorating information situation connected 3 fronts:Urban vulnerability: Bombings successful Islamabad are rare, which is precisely wherefore this onslaught reverberates. It was the 2nd termination onslaught successful the superior successful 3 months, triggering fears of a instrumentality to unit successful large cities.Peripheral insurgency: Balochistan and the occidental borderlands - wherever the astir invaluable mineral deposits prevarication - are experiencing immoderate of the deadliest militant enactment successful years.Militant capability: Security officials and analysts accidental insurgents are progressively equipped with US-made rifles, instrumentality guns, and night-vision devices near down aft the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.Together, these dynamics weaken Munir’s cardinal statement to Trump: that Pakistan tin unafraid large-scale extraction projects captious to US proviso chains.

Why it matters

The stakes widen acold beyond Pakistan. More than 90% of the world’s refined uncommon earths are processed successful China, giving Beijing leverage implicit everything from smartphones to electrical vehicles and precocious defence systems.

Trump has made breaking that near-monopoly a strategical priority, signing deals with Australia, Cambodia, and Thailand and vowing to unafraid “more than you’ll cognize what to bash with.”Copper is emerging arsenic conscionable arsenic critical. Global request is projected to surge from astir 30 cardinal tons contiguous to astir 50 cardinal tons by 2050 arsenic economies electrify and digitize.As Dr Gracelin Baskaran, manager of the Critical Minerals Security Program astatine the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN, “Copper volition substance each portion of our modern economy, and we’re astatine a structural shortage.” She added that this shortage undermines US competitiveness successful processing uncommon earths arsenic well.

Pakistan’s deposits - peculiarly Reko Diq and Muhammad Khel - truthful look similar a geopolitical prize.

Yet they beryllium successful territory that has been wracked by decades of insurgency, present intensified by the unintended consequences of America’s ain warfare successful Afghanistan.

Zoom in: The mines and the money

The Muhammad Khel copper mine, tucked into the rugged Hindu Kush adjacent the Afghan border, produced hundreds of millions of dollars’ worthy of copper past year, overmuch of it shipped to China. Nearby, Reko Diq successful Balochistan holds acold greater promise, with reserves that could adjacent astir a 5th of yearly US copper consumption.These sites are not conscionable commercialized projects; they are imaginable pillars of Pakistan’s economical betterment successful a state that has turned to the International Monetary Fund 24 times since 1958. For Islamabad, minerals are a lifeline. For Washington, they are a strategical hedge against China.

That alignment helped nutrient an antithetic diplomatic infinitesimal successful September, erstwhile Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Munir arrived astatine the White House carrying a thorax of uncommon world samples.

Trump was reportedly delighted, aboriginal calling Munir “My favourite tract marshal.”Yet the optics of concern disguise a harsher truth: the roads to these mines tally done immoderate of the astir unsafe terrain successful South Asia.

Between the lines: America’s weapons, Pakistan’s war

What is progressively shaping events is not geology but weaponry.On a caller sojourn to Pakistan’s borderline regions, CNN was shown much than 100 seized firearms - M-16s, M-4 carbines, M249 instrumentality guns, and Remington sniper rifles - each stamped “Property of US Govt.

Manufactured successful Columbia, South Carolina.” These were not isolated finds. According to defence expert Muhammad Mubasher, US-made weapons person go regular successful clashes with militants since 2022–23.At Wana, adjacent Muhammad Khel, Pakistani officers displayed 3 M-16s recovered aft a termination onslaught connected a subject cadet college. CNN traced their serial numbers done a Freedom of Information Act petition to US Army Material Command astatine Redstone Arsenal, which confirmed that the rifles had been supplied to Afghan information forces years earlier the 2021 withdrawal.

The Pentagon declined to remark further.The interaction is disposable successful Pakistan’s hospitals. Colonel Bilal Saeed, the military’s wide surgeon successful Peshawar, told CNN that alternatively of chiefly treating IED blast injuries, his teams are present “receiving patients with agelong scope gunshot wounds, (or) sniper hits.” He added that the wounded progressively get astatine nighttime due to the fact that insurgents present person “night imaginativeness devices.”For 30-year-old Allah Uddin, a worker guarding a convoy adjacent Muhammad Khel, that technological borderline proved devastating. After losing some legs successful an ambush, helium told CNN: “I don’t cognize wherever they were from but the weapons that they had… were antithetic and better.” Later, reflecting connected his condition, helium said, “I americium precise angry, person you seen my condition?… I’ve seen my wounded companions astir me, and it makes maine adjacent angrier.

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What they are saying

As per a Reuters report, Barrick Gold’s enactment says it is taking a hard look astatine its flagship Reko Diq excavation successful Balochistan arsenic the information situation deteriorates. Chief enforcement Mark Hill said connected a caller post-earnings telephone that the company’s committee is “reviewing each aspects” of the task - including however overmuch wealth it is consenting to perpetrate - aft a crisp emergence successful militant violence. Barrick noted that the reappraisal was triggered by a caller escalation successful information risks successful the province.The institution said its reassessment volition screen the project’s information arrangements, operation timeline and wide superior budget, and that this process would commencement immediately, with a nationalist update erstwhile the reappraisal is complete.Pakistani officials, however, publically task confidence. Army spokesperson Lt General Ahmed Sharif Choudhry told CNN that the United States “has batch to connection for the radical and stableness and prosperity of Pakistan.”

He insists Islamabad volition unafraid mining areas and marque infrastructure “world class,” adding bluntly, “We volition resoluteness it. We person nary different option.”But retired US Air Force Colonel Scott Yeatmen, who advised the Afghan Air Force until weeks earlier Kabul fell, offered a antithetic position connected however this concern arose. “You are not readying for a collapse. You’re readying to proceed to execute operations and forestall the collapse,” helium told CNN, underscoring however small the US anticipated the accelerated disintegration of Afghan forces.John Sopko, erstwhile Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, has been adjacent much stark. He estimates that astir 300,000 US tiny arms were near down successful 2021, on with “communication stuff, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, mortars, cannons, dense instrumentality guns, surveillance instrumentality (and) nighttime imaginativeness equipment.” In his words, Afghanistan is present “effectively… the world’s largest arms bazaar,” and “If you privation … to outfit your violent oregon insurgency organization, Afghanistan is the spot to go.

”Afghan Taliban officials told CNN that each leftover weapons are nether their “control and protection,” but Islamabad has agelong accused Kabul of providing sanctuary to militants - a complaint Kabul denies.

The Balochistan front

The occupation is not constricted to the Pakistan Taliban (TTP). US-made weapons person besides appeared successful the hands of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has fought for decades for greater autonomy and a larger stock of the province’s assets wealth.Michael Kugelman of the Atlantic Council told CNN that Balochistan is some “ground zero for captious mineral opportunities, but it’s besides crushed zero erstwhile it comes to militant threats.” That duality present defines Pakistan’s dilemma.In precocious January, the BLA launched coordinated attacks crossed Balochistan, sidesplitting 33 radical according to the Pakistani military. Islamabad responded with “Operation Radd-ul-Fitna-1,” claiming 216 militants were killed.

In a property release, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said operations were “intelligence-driven” and had “significantly degrad[ed] the leadership, command-and-control structures and operational capabilities of violent networks,” portion acknowledging 36 civilian deaths and 22 information unit killed.

Balochistan main curate Sarfaraz Bugti aboriginal wrote that the cognition sent “a wide connection to those committing acts of bloodshed successful Balochistan,” calling the BLA “a fitna targeting guiltless civilians and labourers” and informing that immoderate manus raised against Pakistan “will not lone beryllium dealt with instrumentality and afloat unit but volition beryllium broken.”Yet the unit has not abated. Dawn reports that 2025 was Balochistan’s deadliest twelvemonth connected record, with astatine slightest 254 attacks - a 26% summation - and much than 400 deaths. Militants person begun concisely seizing territory, storming territory headquarters, blocking highways, and adjacent hijacking rider trains.

Between Trump, Beijing and Kabul

All of this complicates Washington’s mineral strategy.Beijing has watched developments closely, insisting that its “all-weather” concern with Islamabad remains intact contempt Pakistan’s courtship of Trump.

China already dominates rare-earth processing and remains profoundly invested successful CPEC. Any large-scale US-backed mining propulsion successful Balochistan would truthful play retired against a backdrop of US-China rivalry.At the aforesaid time, Trump has publically demanded that the Afghan Taliban instrumentality abandoned US weapons - truthful acold unsuccessfully. In August, his medication designated the BLA arsenic a violent enactment and held a Counterterrorism Dialogue with Pakistan focused connected the BLA, TTP, and Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP).

In January, US and Pakistani forces completed associated infantry and counterterrorism training.Yet nary of this changes the basal arithmetic: arsenic agelong arsenic militants are well-armed and section grievances stay unaddressed, securing mines similar Reko Diq volition beryllium extraordinarily difficult.

What’s next

Field Marshal Munir faces 3 simultaneous tests.First, helium indispensable combat a better-equipped insurgency on Pakistan’s occidental frontier - 1 progressively utilizing American-made weapons and night-fighting capabilities.Second, helium indispensable transportation skeptical Baloch communities that mining projects volition genuinely payment them, not conscionable Islamabad, Beijing, oregon Washington.Third, helium indispensable equilibrium Pakistan’s heavy ties with China against a new, Trump-driven courtship from the United States - each portion keeping the state unchangeable capable for investors.So far, Islamabad is doubling down connected security. Internet shutdowns, sweeping subject operations, and high-profile offensives similar Radd-ul-Fitna-1 suggest small appetite for governmental compromise.But without a parallel strategy of dialogue, development, and genuine power-sharing successful Balochistan, the precise minerals Trump wants whitethorn stay buried - not due to the fact that they are inaccessible, but due to the fact that Pakistan cannot safely scope them.Munir whitethorn person the minerals Trump wants. He does not yet power the crushed they prevarication in.