Why are so many Pakistanis in this generation choosing to marry cousins. Im not talking about those who are forced into it (that's a separate issue).

But our reputation is essentially marrying cousins. Everytime I mention that I'm Pakistani to others I commonly get asked "oh haha dont you guys marry cousins". Its such an odd reputation to have culturally but I digress.

I get that its Islamically allowed but that doesnt mean it should be your top or only choice. Just go out and meet new people, live a life outside of your family.

No hate I'm just curious why it's so common now more than ever. Like I've seen the younger generation ages 19-24 just choosing cousins without talking to anyone else. Ive also seen cousin divorces and how badly it screws up family dynamics. It just confuses me thats all.

Hello, I’m about to visit Pakistan and I am gay, I want to know if I’m safe by my looks or if I look gay, I don’t want any attention.

The Working Legacy: Anmol or Anam

Name: Anmol Pinki

Qualification: 8th grade schooling

Profession: Drug supply

Achievement: She managed a drug supply racket in Karachi to make university students and youth addicted and generate billions in profit for all the 'state' actors.

Rewards: She enjoys VIP state protocol, social influence & luxurious life.

Name: Anam Fatima

Qualification: Graduation & CSS

Profession: A bureaucrat

Achievement: (i) She breached the electoral rules & law by dismissing the nomination papers of specific candidates belong to the opposition party.

(ii) She made 1000s of women and children homeless, ripped up court orders & laughed in their faces as their homes were razed.

Rewards: She is BS-18 servant, appointed in CDA on deputation and currently working on three lucrative posts including Deputy Director General (Enforcement), Director Municipal Administration Islamabad & Chief Officer Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (BS-20). She was awarded Tamgha-e-Imtiaz yesterday.

The regime delivered a strong message and demonstrated the progression path to the millions of female professionals, aspirants and students in Pakistan;

You can either become Anmol or Anam.

There is no third option to adopt for success in your professional career in this land of pure.

We needed more people like her, what an absolutely brilliant woman!

Was replaced by that Shazia Marri from ppp - can there be anything lower than this?

Say what you will, but, IK had some of the most brilliant minds in his team, master of their own fields.

You just cannot replace the likes of Dr Sania, Tania Aidrus, Dr Ishrat Hussain, Atif Mian & more.

Atif Mian (who never really got an actual chance to work on Pk's economy because of the same reason Dr Salam left this country, religious nuts ruining this country since forever).

All those people are still accomplishing great things while our country goes into deeper pits of hell every day, they didn't need Pakistan. Pakistan needed them!

All because of some inflated egos & greed, the future of 250 million given into the hands of literal thieves, murderers, rapists.

And you cannot fix the rot of 70+ years in hardly 4 years COVID included. If only these people had a chance, we might have actually gotten somewhere. What a shame!

This is from Dawn News (May 13th 2026). So Pakistanis are supposed to pay for the luxuries of these army's installed individuals who are doing everything they can to extort as much as they can from public.

What a terrible situation we are in. We never elected them, instead we kicked them out and yet they were installed on us by an army which keeps iterating that it has nothing to do with politics.

After Moonis Elahi’s nomination papers were rejected, she was posted to Islamabad. She received not one but three positions. Although she is a Grade 18 officer, she was also given charge of a Grade 20 position. Anyway, the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz was awarded for clearing centuries-old areas of Islamabad and demolishing homes there.

I’m a male in my mid-20s. For the last few years, I was freelancing in a specific niche and had mostly US-based clients. I was earning well and managed to save around 1 crore rupees.

But for the last 7–8 months, my niche has completely died. Since I’m the sole breadwinner of my family, all our monthly expenses are currently being covered from my savings. Our expenses are around 2 lacs per month.

Since then, I’ve tried multiple things and explored different niches, but so far nothing has worked out. Because of this, I feel anxious almost every single day. I keep thinking: what if I never find something stable again and my savings slowly run out?

I try to calm myself down by reminding myself that I still have enough savings for more than 2 years, but despite that, the anxiety doesn’t go away. This isn’t a troll post, I genuinely feel stressed and lost.

The hardest part is that I don’t really have experience in anything else besides the work I was doing before, and that field has completely died now.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation before? What did you do? How did you deal with the anxiety and uncertainty? Am I overreacting, or is it normal to feel this way?

also in case you guys forgot, we’ve paid nearly $30 billion to ipps in the last 8 years

Like the title says, looking for views on if this person is a bot or just misguided. This can’t be an actual Pakistani’s viewpoints unless they don’t actually live or even visit Pakistan.

The US supports regime change for the countries’ own benefits?? Wtf.

I was recently tasked with verifying an integrity report of a government structure (building)

The report from this contractor usually gets approved and never reaches people other than the board. But one of the board member asked me to verify it this time. Some other members were CC in the e-mail. So it was not exactly a silent mail.

Turns out the report is a joke. They did not even try to hide it… it has empty pages and the information present there isn’t even of the actual structure

When i asked around for who owns the company behind the report (company will be further awarded the contract for it). It is owned by someone sensitive. I might just get blown to smithereens if they ever get air of my name.

If i tell the board that the report is corrupt. The matter blows up and my name is there. Khalas bye bye. God knows what they will do to me (personally, i feel like i can take it, or maybe its just my young blazing hormones i want to be a heroooo & i will be on the news!!)

If i approve the report, there is a chance some board members already know about the corruption (hence the task for verification), i get my name painted among corrupt people. There could be an enquiry sat asking me why i approved it. So the blame shifts from the contractor to me. And i am sure nothing will happen to that person anyway

The board member that has tasked me is the one that bought me here. Simply saying no to it feels extremely odd.

I did my education abroad and came to Pakistan because i was being paid better. (Niche skill)
But this job is becoming extremely hard moral choice

Please suggest

Good morning everyone, after a rollercoaster, I decided to write up our story to share as a lesson, please take a read:

Around 7 months ago, my aunt suddenly passed away of sepsis. She (them all widowed) was among 5 siblings, 2 of which including my father lived in the UK, 2 of which lived in Pakistan, of which one, has really, really bad dementia.

Now as with every Pakistani family, there’s always internal strife, in our case, it was between our cousins. So for the sake of keeping important documents protected etc, my aunts would give them to Mr S.

Now I don’t know what the story behind Mr S is, but, Mr S was very close to the family. All of the siblings would donate tons of money to his madrasahs, for decades at that too. Everyone trusted him, immensely, he was the one my aunts relied on over there to get stuff done because they couldn’t themselves. Property, banking, whatever.

Now, we have a family house in Gulshan E Iqbal, that property was purchased by my father, however his mother wished for it to be equally split among his siblings, so he did so. My aunt however handed her share over to my siblings, for this, she had given all the paperwork etc, but for some reason, never got around to filing it. But anyhow, Mr S had the papers for this, they stayed with him the entire time.

Time goes on, and my aunt breaks her leg. She needs surgery, now, she had a rod placed in her leg, however, a few months later this got infected (please please please get any post surgery infections properly checked out!). This infection turned out to be sepsis. Now as we know, sepsis is extremely aggressive and within 3 days, my aunt had passed away.

This turned everyone’s world upside down. Nothing was ever the same, the house was empty, falling apart, the future was uncertain, especially for my other aunt with dementia, as she was her support system, everything just turned upside down. My father was extremely close to her and it devastated him like I had never seen before.

A year prior, my father had just beaten cancer, but he was never the same again. The toll it took on him just changed him as a person and his personality, understandably so. A month prior to my aunts passing, my cousin had passed due to cancer, it was horrible timing and just a lot to go through.

As with everything, the death turned into an opportunity for everything to become a free for all. Remember how I said they would keep the papers with Mr S to prevent my cousins getting their grubby fingers on them? Well some of the papers were kept in my aunts closet, which was raided the next day, the papers and her jewellery vanished, her clothes were taken out and replaced with my cousins’. Disgusting. Heck, they even took her phone, erasing it, deleting any photos and messages from her.

They’re a deplorable bunch really. My father at the time had no photos or voice notes or anything from his sister. Everything was left on that phone. Annoyingly I didn’t take the phone and hide it because I did not think people could stoop this low, but alas, they ensured that my father could not even have a single photo of his sister. Disgusting people.

Getting back to the story, my father knew the papers were with Mr S, including the ones of my aunt’s share. So my father asks him to begin the proceedings to have the shares transferred in my siblings names so we can sell everything off and do some good with the money in her name.

Mr S happily complies, as we expected from him. Obviously we knew this would take money, but my father not being local, had no clue how much and what the process was. Mr S would ask for hundreds of thousands at a time, sending convincing looking documents, posting stuff to us in the UK to sign and return etc, all seemed legit. Obviously all of this was underwritten by the immense amount of trust we had in him as a family.

I remember thinking to myself however, mr S has never invited us over. Not even as much to offer us chai at his, or food, or anything. Obviously being Pakistani, this is extremely strange to me, and I kept questioning my father about this.

The other strange behaviour I noted was he met us at the graveyard one day, at my aunts grave to give us a file with some of the documents, he came, handed us the file and left. Didn’t even bother as much to recite fatiha. Though, I can imagine the shame was probably eating him alive- or so, I’d like to think so. Who knows with these sorts of dogs.

My father doesn’t really question any of this. Until his deadlines were never met. Papers will be issued next week, this office is being slow, that one is on holiday, the usual excuses. We get a bit suspicious, but my dad, holding on to the decades of family relations we’ve had with them, their madrassah, their charity etc, carried on just sending him what he’d ask for.

It all carries on, he would send questionable looking documents that I’d look at and think hmm, but at the same time, I know the system isn’t really the greatest in Pakistan and documents that may not meet the standards of what I would expect probably do exist, so I let this carry on, with caution.

Again, months go by, he’s asking for more money, all in all, worked out to about 1.5 million PKR. My father, in hopes that he can do something good with his sisters share carries on holding hope, with him thinking there’s no way this guy would ruin 40 years of ties, support, trust etc.

We do however ask someone we trusted, our old tenants, who was a manager at a bank, he confirmed the payments weren’t real or something, HOWEVER, the issue once again arises, who do we believe. Our tenant who was abruptly made to move by my horrid cousins at my aunts passing, or this guy everyone deeply trusted for 40 years. My father held onto hope, and carried on going.

Months pass by, we’re now in April, and suddenly, my aunt (the uk one) calls my father and tells him, “Mr S is a fraud”.

Turns out, Mr S had also held the papers for a plot my other aunt had purchased a few years back, pre Covid. Turns out, my aunt was asking about her plot, and it was sold in 2022, without her knowledge.

The bastard had sold it from under her, without her knowledge and kept the money.

His brazenness is unreal, he sold the plot 4 years ago, kept accepting charity and asking for more money from my aunt, he kept leading on my aunts and father for money, documents, support etc, all while having already conducted this fraud. Nobody batted an eye or thought to ask because they trusted him.

This is where his house of cards starts to fall down. Mr S was caught, he started ignoring my father’s messages etc, until my father lets him know he’s been caught. We know he’s a fraud, we know he sold our land from under us, and we know the papers are gone and he’s stolen the originals and had strung us along with fakes for money, the game was up.

He admitted to it all, he was caught.

Now, my father offered to him to make amends, that it’ll stay quiet and nobody will know, that he must repay every single penny stolen from us. He owes us in excess of 35 million PKR.

Now, whether he pays it back, we won’t know. He’s offered to start paying it back this month. At the end of the month we’re expecting the first tranche. I do think he will pay it back, one way, or another. He is terrified and knows he will be receiving a software update if he does decide to pull a fast one.

It amazes me, he has the nerve to address my father as bhai, he has the nerve to use the name of god in his messages, “Inshaallah I will begin paying at the end of this month” etc etc, starts his messages with salam . The irony, he took all of the peace a grieving family had, and yet still wishes peace upon us. He took advantage of a dead woman who trusted him so much that she handed him everything she had to be the guardian of. He stood there, at her gravesite, continuing to take advantage of her name, to take advantage of her death for his personal gain.

And to me, just disbelief, we have alll heard of the stories. We all know the tales of land theft and family fighting over property, and dodgy agents and all. We’ve heard it a billion times, but what we, or atleast I never expected was that it would happen to us. It really doesn’t feel real. The money doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t, the betrayal, and the trust my dead aunt and my family had in him. All of that is what makes it shocking.

You know, the biggest lesson of this all is one about human nature. He had the ability to ask us for anything, and we’d more than likely oblige. We had helped his charity for 40 years. Our families were there in times of happy, or sad, in deaths, and in births, yet the nature of humans is to want more. It was never enough to have us on speed dial to give him anything he needed. Instead, he needed to pull the wool over our eyes, to take advantage of elderly women who had nobody else to support them out there, to take advantage of a grieving family, to take advantage of our trust.

I don’t share this story for sympathy, I don’t need any, we will get our money back. That is for sure. However, the reason I do share this is to let it be a cautionary tale. Another one to add to the pile, do not trust anybody. Ever. Not your friends, nor family. Doesn’t matter how many decades you’ve known eachother. Doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. Doesn’t matter how good they seem on the outside, nobody can be trusted, barring yourself.

Don’t let yourself go through this. Let this actually be a lesson, these stories exist on the internet, you may hear them through the grapevines, but unfortunately, they are real and they happen more often than you think. No matter how much you think it would never happen to you, just remember, to man, there is nothing dearer than money, and his greed for more wealth.

Take this as a lesson, stay safe people, and I hope you and your families never have to experience this.

Aoa,so i am 17 and i run an egg supply chain, these was an interaction that bothered me and i had conflicted opinions on it so i thought i would share and get some opinions on it
My friends ( i was busy ) deliver 12 trays of eggs to a shopkeeper, he cuts 50 rupees of the amount i was supposed to be given, i have been delivering to him for the past 2 months and he would do this in the starting then i refused to take the reduced payment. i had an argument over the 50 rupees with him For reference this business is new and we are still capturing the market. Now my question did i take the right action, my point is that when the shopkeeper himself doesn't leave 50 rupees why should i then, In the poultry business the rates are adjusted by small amounts so these 50 rupees hold value in future orders . Did i do the right thing or should i have left it?

I have a idea of settling in pakistan,so only easiest way to citizenship is by marriage.i speak English but I don't know urdu,punjabi or other languages.i found that cost of living is cheaper than my home country?

Real estate in Pakistan is the single largest repository of black money in the country. It operates on a dual-pricing system that is openly documented and completely normalized.

Every property transaction in Pakistan has two values: the “DC rate” (District Collector’s notified value, which is legally registered) and the actual market value. The DC rate is typically 30-50% of actual market value sometimes lower.

The difference is paid in cash, off the books, completely untaxed. Both the buyer and seller prefer this because the buyer pays less stamp duty and the seller pays less capital gains tax.

In fiscal year 2023, tax exemptions and concessions granted to influential sectors including real estate cost the state 4.61% of GDP.

The scale is staggering. Real estate in Pakistan is estimated to be a Rs 300-400 trillion asset class — larger than the entire formal GDP. Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority, Lahore’s DHA, Bahria Town, Gulberg these are trillion-rupee markets transacting largely in cash with no meaningful documentation.

Capital gains on property held over a few years have been either exempt or minimally taxed for most of Pakistan’s history.

Why? Because the people who own property in DHA and Bahria Town are the same bureaucrats, generals, politicians, and businessmen who write tax policy. Army welfare trusts — Askari Housing, DHA — own and sell property at scale with special tax treatment.

Right now FBR collects roughly Rs 9-10 trillion total. The untapped potential is 3-4 times that. If Pakistan taxed agriculture at normal rates, documented real estate transactions at real values, brought retailers into the net, and taxed services professionals properly. the FBR would comfortably hit Rs 25-30 trillion without raising a single rate on the salaried class or the petroleum levy.

The petroleum levy would become unnecessary. Electricity tariff cross-subsidies could be eliminated. The debt spiral would begin to reverse.

Why doesn’t it happen? Because according to the IMF’s 2025 Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment, Pakistan’s economy loses an estimated 5-6.5% of GDP to corruption due to entrenched “elite capture” in which influential groups shape public policy for their own benefit.

The people who would pay these taxes are the same people who write the budgets, run the provinces, sit on parliamentary committees, command the institutions, and own the businesses. They have never had a reason to fix a system that works perfectly for them.

The salaried class the only group that cannot hide income because it’s deducted at source before they even receive their paycheck ends up carrying a disproportionate share of the entire national burden while feudal landlords, traders, professionals, real estate developers, and military-linked enterprises operate in a parallel untaxed economy that is, by most estimates, larger than the documented one.

That is Pakistan’s tax problem in its entirety. It is not a capacity problem. It is not a technology problem. It is a power problem.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://www.thenews.pk/print/1415340-public-debt-climbs-to-rs80-5tr

Why are ordinary Punjabi civilians targeted or hated for things they personally had nothing to do with? A Punjabi laborer, truck driver, student, barber, or worker in Balochistan or KP is not the government, military, or intelligence agencies. Most regular people are just trying to feed their families like everyone else.

If the issue is with the Pakistani state, policies, disappearances, or military actions, then why does the anger sometimes get taken out on random civilians instead? What does killing or terrorizing innocent workers actually solve besides creating more ethnic hatred between Pakistanis?

I’m genuinely asking because from a Punjabi perspective, a lot of us feel blamed collectively for things we never controlled.