For decades, Pakistanis have helped build the Gulf — not in the abstract, but literally. They poured the concrete, drove the trucks, staffed the ports, wired the towers, guarded the compounds, and sent billions of dollars home to families who depended on those remittances to survive. Across the Gulf, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Pakistani labour became part of the foundation of modern prosperity.

But while Pakistanis helped build the Gulf economies, Pakistan itself never quite figured out how to build a durable economic future from that relationship.

That gap is becoming harder to ignore.

The Gulf today is changing faster than many countries around it. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to move beyond oil dependence into technology, logistics, finance, tourism, renewables, and artificial intelligence. Their sovereign wealth funds are investing across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States with increasing sophistication and discipline.

For Pakistan, this shift creates both an opportunity and a warning.

For years, Islamabad operated on a quiet assumption that strategic importance would always compensate for economic weakness. Pakistan mattered because of its military, its geography, its relationship with the wider Muslim world, and its ability to navigate difficult regional politics. That importance was real — and still is.

But strategic relevance has........

© The Friday Times