I HAVE waited many years, decades, to write these words and the time has finally come. Today, I feel proud to be a Pakistani. Today, my country stands out among the comity of nations as a peacemaker of historic proportions. This is, quite possibly, the single biggest day in the life of our country.

Let’s not underestimate what just happened. A madman president of the United States had just said “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back” on the morning of Tuesday, April 7, the day his self-imposed deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was set to expire. The words sounded ominously like a threat to use nuclear weapons, especially when coupled with Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks that the US has “tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use”. As the deadline neared, attentive observers shared screenshots showing heavy bombers taking off from airbases in the UK, headed for Iran, with a seven- to eight-hour flight path ahead of them. It was one of the most ominous moments in living memory.

So it is natural that when news first broke, via a tweet from the Pakistani prime minister that a ceasefire agreement had been reached, a brief flare-up of elation ensued. We waited breathlessly to hear acknowledgement and confirmation from the US and Iran, which came a few hours later. The most ruinous war of our time was ended before it could escalate into a catastrophe. And Pakistan played the lead role in bringing this about. This was no minor........

© Dawn