Bangladesh, Jan. 27 -- The irony of being Pakistan is that it had to pay one billion US dollars for Donald Trumps Board of Peace seat while it seeks 2.2 billion US dollars in UAE aid. Pakistan is reeling under impoverishment, yet it spends like a country swimming in surplus. It is as if the nation is borrowing oxygen while promising to plant forests abroad. That single contradiction captures the state of affairs in Pakistan today.

It is not anger alone, and it is not confusion alone. It is disbelief mixed with exhaustion. How does a country negotiating loan rollovers, begging for IMF relief, and struggling to keep its foreign reserves afloat suddenly find room for billion-dollar diplomacy? How does a state that asks its people to tighten...