Pakistan seems to have caught the geopolitical winds just right. Last month, Pakistan signed a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. Under this bold pact, an attack on one will be regarded as an attack on both, a dramatic escalation of security guarantees in a region already crowded with rivalries. At the same time, Islamabad has quietly dispatched rare earth mineral samples to the United States and is exploring deeper export agreements. Washington, for its part, appears newly interested in treating Pakistan as more than a peripheral irritant.

These moves suggest momentum. Commentators in Islamabad and Riyadh call it a renaissance of Pakistani foreign policy, a belated recognition of the country’s strategic indispensability. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s presence at the Gaza peace summit only reinforced the impression of a nation returning to centre stage in the Muslim world.

But this is no overnight miracle. It is the product of necessity, pressure and shifting alignments in a volatile region. Behind the optics lie harder realities.

The first driver of Pakistan’s foreign policy push is the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Washington’s abrupt exit left a vacuum it still struggles to fill. With a hostile Iran and an entrenched Taliban, the US needs a counterweight in the region. Pakistan, with its geography, intelligence networks and long entanglement in Afghan affairs, suddenly matters again.

US President Donald Trump’s demand that the Taliban hand over the Bagram airbase, five years after signing the deal that paved the way for the US withdrawal, underscores America’s search for leverage. If that gambit fails, Pakistan becomes the obvious fallback: the only state with both logistical capacity and political connections to help Washington maintain a presence in the region.

The second factor is the uneasy US-India relationship. Over the past decade, Washington has drawn New Delhi deeper into its Indo-Pacific strategy, strengthening its global profile in ways Pakistan sees as threatening. Yet US-India friction has grown. Disputes over visas and tariffs have festered. India’s embrace of Moscow has raised eyebrows in Washington.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August visit to Beijing sent a clear signal that India is willing to hedge its bets with China. Economically, his “Make in India” programme, modelled on East Asia’s low-cost export strategies, could undercut US manufacturing. For Trump, eager to maintain balance in Asia, Pakistan appears useful again as a counterweight to India’s flirtations with Beijing.

The third and most precarious driver is mineral diplomacy. Islamabad’s outreach to Washington centres on promises of access to rare earth minerals, many of which are located in the restive region of Balochistan. On paper, this looks like a win-win: Pakistan gains investment, and the US secures critical resources. But the reality is darker. Balochistan remains Pakistan’s poorest province despite decades of extraction. Infrastructure projects stand underused, airports lie empty and unemployment remains stubbornly high.

The Balochistan Mines and Minerals Act 2025, passed by the provincial legislature in March, has only deepened discontent. Under the act, Islamabad is formally empowered to recommend mining policies and licensing decisions in Balochistan, a move that has provoked opposition across the political spectrum. Critics argue it undermines provincial autonomy and recentralises control in Islamabad. Even right-wing religious parties, such as the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), seldom aligned with nationalist groups, have expressed opposition, portraying the law as yet another attempt to dispossess local communities of their rightful stake in the province’s resources.

This backlash underscores a dangerous trend. Resource exploitation without local participation fuels resentment and insurgency. By opening mineral wealth to foreign investors without social safeguards, Islamabad risks deepening the alienation of a province already scarred by conflict and militarisation. What looks like salvation in Islamabad can look like dispossession in Quetta.

Taken together, these drivers show that Pakistan’s foreign policy shift is less a renaissance than a calculated pivot under pressure. The Afghan vacuum, the recalibration of US-India ties and the lure of mineral diplomacy all explain Islamabad’s newfound prominence. But none erases underlying fragilities. Washington may once again treat Pakistan as disposable when its priorities change. India’s weight in US strategy is not going away. And Balochistan’s grievances will only deepen if resource deals remain extractive and exclusionary.

The applause in Riyadh, the visibility at the Gaza summit and the polite handshakes in Washington should not be mistaken for a strategic rebirth. Pakistan is manoeuvring carefully, improvising under pressure and seeking to turn vulnerabilities into opportunities. But the real test lies at home. Unless Islamabad can confront governance failures, regional inequalities and political mistrust, foreign policy gains will remain fragile.

In the end, no defence pact or minerals deal can substitute for a stable social contract within Pakistan itself. That is the true renaissance Pakistan still awaits.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Two suspects have been arrested over the theft of precious crown jewels from Paris’s Louvre museum, French media say.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said one of the men had been taken into custody as he was preparing to take a flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Items worth €88m (£76m; $102m) were taken from the world’s most-visited museum last Sunday, when four thieves wielding power tools broke into the building in broad daylight.

France’s justice minister has conceded security protocols “failed”, leaving the country with a “terrible image”.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the arrests had been made on Saturday evening, without specifying how many people had been taken into custody.

One of the suspects was preparing to travel to Algeria, police sources have told French media, while it’s understood the other was going to Mali.

Specialist police can question them for up to 96 hours.

The Paris prosecutor criticised the “premature disclosure” of information related to the case, adding that it hindered efforts to recover the jewels and find the thieves.

The thieves reportedly arrived at 09:30 (06:30 GMT), shortly after the museum opened to visitors.

The suspects arrived with a vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) via a balcony close to the River Seine.

Pictures from the scene showed the ladder leading up to a first-floor window.

Two of the thieves entered by cutting through the window with power tools.

They then threatened the guards, who evacuated the premises, and cut through the glass of two display cases containing jewels.

A preliminary report has revealed that one in three rooms in the area of the museum raided had no CCTV cameras, according to French media.

French police say the thieves were inside for four minutes and made their escape on two scooters waiting outside at 09:38.

The museum’s director told French senators this week that the only camera monitoring the exterior wall of the Louvre where they broke in was pointing away from the first-floor balcony that led to Gallery of Apollo.

CCTV around the perimeter was also weak and “ageing”, Laurence des Cars said, meaning that staff failed to spot the gang early enough to stop the theft.

Experts have also expressed concern that the jewels may have already been broken up into hundreds of pieces.

Gold and silver can be melted down and the gems can be cut up into smaller stones that will be virtually impossible to track back to the robbery, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC.

Security measures have since been tightened around France’s cultural institutions.

The Louvre has transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France following the heist. They will now be stored in the Bank’s most secure vault, 26m (85ft) below the ground floor of its elegant headquarters in central Paris.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have been banned from Villa Park for their Europa League game against Aston Villa. But who decides when away fans are banned and what constitutes a high-risk game? Samantha Johnson looks at the reasons and the politics behind banning orders in European football.

It was, as everyone knew it would be, all about US President Donald Trump.

He literally towered over everyone else at the ceremony in Kuala Lumpur where Cambodia and Thailand signed their agreement. He gave the longest speech – and made the biggest claims.

It was all superlatives.

“This is a momentous day for South East Asia,” Trump said. “A monumental step.”

Describing the two slightly sheepish-looking prime ministers who were about to sign the deal as “historic figures”, Trump recalled at length how he got involved in the Thai-Cambodian border conflict while he was visiting his Turnberry golf course in Scotland in July.

“And I said this is much more important than a round of golf… I could have had a lot of fun, but this is much more fun… saving people and saving countries.”

Trump had asked for this special ceremony as a condition for coming to the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit – a gathering US presidents have attended at times in the past, but not always. And he used it to press his campaign to be recognised as a great peacemaker.

“The eight wars that my administration has ended in eight months – there’s never been anything like that,” he said. “We’re averaging one a month… It’s like, I shouldn’t say it’s a hobby, because it’s so much more serious, but something I’m good at and something I love to do.”

But what does the “Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord”, as Trump has renamed it, actually amount to?

Remember, both countries signed a ceasefire back in July.

That, too, was helped – or at least accelerated – by pressure from Trump.

Looking at the details of the latest deal, though, it isn’t much of leap forward.

The two countries have agreed to withdraw their heavy weapons from the disputed border and to establish an interim observer team to monitor it.

They have a new procedure for clearing landmines, and will set up what they call a joint taskforce to address the proliferation of scam centres.

They will replace missing border markers with temporary ones.

This is progress – and Thai diplomats have told me they do feel Trump’s involvement may help these agreements stick.

But the historic differences over the border remain unresolved and are at risk of flaring up again.

After the ceremony, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow refused to call it a peace agreement – sticking instead to their own preferred title “Joint Declaration by the prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia on the outcomes of their meeting in Kuala Lumpur”, which doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.

“I would call it a pathway to peace,” was as far as Sihasak was willing to go – a far cry from Trump’s expansive claims for it.

“It’s an extremely slight agreement for the president of the United States to be presiding over,” posted Sebastian Strangio, author and South East Asia Editor for the Diplomat magazine.

Cambodia has been a lot more enthusiastic, but then it has always sought to internationalise its dispute with Thailand – referring it to the International Court of Justice – something Thailand does not agree with.

At the ceremony, Prime Minister Hun Manet gushed with praise for the US president – reminding him that his government had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charvirakul was more circumspect – mindful of nationalist pressure back home not to be giving too much away to Cambodia, a problem the authoritarian government in Cambodia does not have to worry about.

Thailand has always insisted the dispute should be resolved bilaterally, with no outside mediation.

It says it appreciates Trump’s support, and describes the US and Malaysia as only “facilitating” this agreement.

Neither country – nor the rest of Asean – could afford to spurn Trump’s request for this ceremony.

South East Asia is the most export-dependant region in the world, far more reliant on the US market than China.

It has had a difficult year living under the existential threat posed by Trump’s initial tariffs – up to 48% – and going through the nail-biting negotiations to bring them down to a more manageable 19-20%.

Trump is not even staying for most of the Asean summit.

After a couple of bilateral meetings and a dinner, he’s off the Japan, and then to a Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) meeting – another multilateral grouping at odds with his brutally transactional style, but where he hopes to reset relations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

But just having had the US president here in Kuala Lumpur for 24 hours will, Asean hopes, help restore some stability to their relationship.