Pakistan, July 19 -- For seven decades, Pakistan's development story ran on a familiar script: Western governments wrote checks, and Islamabad built projects. That script effectively ended on January 20, 2025, when President Trump signed an executive order suspending nearly all US foreign assistance. Thirty-nine major USAID-funded projects, worth more than $845 million, were halted overnight, affecting an estimated 1.7 million people.

The suspension was the sharpest disruption, but not an isolated one. The UK is cutting official development assistance from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of GNI by 2027, Germany's development budget is contracting, and even the EU has kept Pakistan's envelope flat. Total Western bilateral flows fell from roughly $1.0...