Ishaq Dar, four-time finance minister of cash-strapped Pakistan, is now country’s foreign minister

Pakistan has appointed a new foreign minister in the form of Ishaq Dar, who previously held the post of finance minister. Dar faces new challenges and is expected to tackle the many domestic and external issues, including the nation’s relations with India.

On Monday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inducted his 19-member cabinet after the cash-strapped country underwent a tumultuous period under a caretaker government.

Who is Ishaq Dar?

A four-time finance minister and a seasoned politician, Dar, 73, belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Dar, an ethnic Kashmiri and a chartered accountant by profession is a confidant of the party and former three-time premier Nawaz Sharif.

During his tenure as the country’s finance minister, Dar did not enjoy the support of his colleagues over his handling of Pakistan’s brittle economy.

Inflation spiked as high as 38 per cent and interest rates to 22 per cent during Dar’s 16-month stint, mostly due to the IMF’s policy requirements.

Under the now-foreign minister, Pakistan struggled for seven months to unlock the remaining tranches of its last $6.5 billion bailout programme, and ultimately it took Shehbaz Sharif’s intervention to secure a new last-ditch deal.

A mammoth problem awaits Dar

Pakistan is not on the best of terms with its neighbors and as the country struggled to keep its economy afloat for the past couple of years, the caretaker government had little to no time to thaw relations with neighbouring countries.

Amid this, Dar has to improve Islamabad’s ties with countries like India and Afghanistan as well as address Pakistan’s role in terrorism.

In a tweet on February 5, the Kashmir Solidarity Day, this year, Dar said Pakistan was “committed to its unwavering political, moral and diplomatic support to the just struggle of our Kashmiri brethren for their right of self-determination, as enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter and relevant UN resolutions.”

Dar will have to navigate these challenges in a minority government that will rely on the support of different parties to pass critical legislation, with alliance partner Pakistan Peoples Party saying it would support the government on an issue-to-issue basis.