Pakistan serves as a pre-eminent case study of a state creating a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ by funding and facilitating proxies to destabilise a neighbour. Throughout the 1980s, acting at the behest of the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani state recruited, trained and armed various Islamist Afghan groups to combat Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan.

Once the Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, the victorious proxies failed to reach an amicable power-sharing agreement and began fighting amongst themselves. Desperate to maintain a stake in the region, Pakistan helped mould an even more extreme force, the Taliban, who won decisive battles against rival factions to install a stringent Islamist regime by 1996 in Afghanistan.

While the Pakistani state believed it had successfully installed a government beneficial to its strategic geopolitical interests, the internal fallout of this involvement had already commenced. A decade of establishing recruitment centres where young men were indoctrinated and trained in guerrilla warfare eventually backfired.

These proxy militants turned their guns against the Pakistani state, forming groups such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to demand the enforcement of Sharia law and the creation of a ‘Greater Afghanistan’ that included Pakistan’s own Pakhtun-majority areas.

From Afghan militancy in the 1980s and 1990s to the Middle East’s sectarian militias and from Africa to Balochistan, modern history is filled with states that created violent proxies, only for them to become existential threats to themselves

For the next two decades, anti-state groups comprising former proxies and their Pakistani allies unleashed waves of brutal attacks across the country. By the time the state fully grasped the devastating consequences of the strategy it had initiated in the 1980s, over 80,000 Pakistani soldiers, police personnel, politicians and civilians had been killed.

This ongoing conflict underscores a devastating strategic reversal, where proxies, once cultivated as a shield for regional interests, became an existential threat, sustained by the very forces Pakistan helped bring to power.

This is but just one example of how proxies often become a problem for their own creators, a phenomenon frequently described as ‘blowback’. History is littered with instances where short-term tactical gains through third party actors led to long-term domestic catastrophes.

In 2009, the American journalist Andrew Higgins wrote that Israel’s early, indirect encouragement of Islamist elements in the Palestinian territories as a counterweight to Yasser Arafat’s secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), contributed to the rise of Hamas, which later became Israel’s most formidable local adversary.

These cases demonstrate a recurring geopolitical truth, that when a state breathes life into a proxy, it loses the ability to control the monster’s appetite once the original mission is over. This loss of control often transforms a strategic asset into a primary security threat, as Iraq experienced following the 2003 US invasion. The initial support provided by regional powers such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran to sectarian militias in Iraq eventually resulted in the birth of the Islamic State (ISIS).

In his book ISIS: A History, Lebanese-American academic Fawaz Gerges writes that many of the fighters who formed the backbone of ISIS were seasoned by years of proxy warfare, eventually turning their sights not just on Western targets, but on the regional states that had once turned a blind eye to their radicalisation.

According to British academic Dr Alex Vines, Apartheid-era South Africa funded and trained rebels in Mozambique to destabilise that country. While the rebels successfully crippled Mozambique’s infrastructure, the resulting chaos created a massive refugee crisis and a thriving black market in small arms that flooded back across South African borders, fuelling a rise in violent crime and instability that persisted long after the official conflict ended.

In his book Proxy Warfare, the British political scientist Andrew Mumford writes that the danger of creating proxies lies in the inherent paradox of attempting to outsource national security to autonomous actors, whose interests only temporarily align with those of the sponsor.

According to the American political scientist Tyrone Groh, while states often view these groups as cost-effective tools for projectable power and plausible deniability, they frequently ignore the reality that a proxy is not a precision-guided weapon but a sentient political entity with its own evolving ambitions.

As a conflict progresses, the proxy inevitably seeks to shed its dependence on its creator, often utilising the training, funding and ideological fervour it was gifted by its facilitator to pursue an independent and frequently contradictory agenda. This transforms a strategic asset into a domestic liability, a phenomenon that forces the original sponsor to expend even greater resources to contain the radicalism or violence it once actively cultivated.

Despite the overwhelming historical evidence that proxies eventually turn on their creators, the allure of low-cost, deniable warfare remains irresistible to modern states. According to Mumford, this persistence suggests that, for many governments, the immediate tactical advantages — such as bleeding a rival — outweighs the potential for long-term domestic catastrophe.

Contemporary geopolitics has seen the rise of new sponsors who have adopted these risky strategies with varying degrees of success and instability. India has frequently been accused of utilising proxy groups to maintain leverage in its complex regional environment. More recently, scholarship has examined the manner in which India is leveraging Baloch separatist groups in Pakistan to destabilise its western frontier.

The Baloch separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), as well as the Islamist TTP, have increasingly been identified by Pakistani authorities and some regional analysts as instruments of Indian strategic interest. The discourse surrounding their Indian-proxy status has intensified following significant escalations in 2025 and 2026.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the UAE has emerged as a significant sponsor of third party actors to project power far beyond its small geographic footprint. According to the conflict analyst Emadeddin Badi, during the Libyan civil war, the UAE provided extensive military support, drone strikes, and funding to Gen Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

According to the researcher Peter Salisbury, in Yemen, the UAE trained and equipped the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist militia that eventually staged military takeovers of key governorates, often clashing with the interests of the UAE’s own coalition partner, Saudi Arabia. UAE has also faced international scrutiny for its alleged role in fuelling the civil war in Sudan by supplying the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with weapons and logistics, a strategy that has contributed to a massive humanitarian crisis and a surge in regional instability.

According to Groh, the continued reliance on this strategy by states confirms a grim geopolitical truth: the “Frankenstein” lesson is often ignored in favour of immediate strategic depth.

Even as nations witness blowback around the world, the temptation to use proxies as a ‘surgical’ tool for regional dominance remains a primary feature of modern statecraft, despite the near-certainty of future complications.

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 8th, 2026

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Dear Auntie,
I am 18 years old and my family is forcing me to quit my studies and help my father in the family business. This has left me depressed. I want to become an engineer and I am currently preparing for the engineering college admission test (ECAT). My dream is to get admission in COMSATS University Islamabad.

But my family is demotivating me, saying I will not get admission in any university and that I should just join our family business. I have argued with them about it so many times but I can’t win.
Dreaming Under Pressure

‘My Parents Want Me To Give Up On My Dreams’

Dear Dreaming Under Pressure,
What your family is doing obviously feels suffocating to you. The thing is that when the people who you expect will always back you (ie family) start predicting that you will fail, it can mess with your head. You can start doubting your own dreams and capabilities. However, that only means that you are human.

But you are not alone. Being pressured to join a family business is common, as is having your ambition trivialised or dismissed. However, despite facing opposition, some people still go on to become engineers… and so, that is also common.

Right now, your family is speaking from a place of fear, not facts. They are probably thinking, “What if he fails?” and they also probably think that the family business is something that is guaranteed. Whereas you are probably thinking, “What if I never try?” This last fear is the one that can end up following you for the rest of your life.

At 18, most people’s life direction gets decided. If you give up now just to avoid arguments, you won’t be at peace. You’ll likely end up feeling resentful. And simmering resentment is not good for anyone’s family business.

On the flip side, if we are being honest, shouting matches between you and your parents won’t help you win this. You cannot defeat your parents with your emotions. You need to think this through… calmly.

So, firstly, stop arguing in a dramatic way and start talking to them like someone who has thought this through. Show them the dates for your ECAT and the entry test schedules. Share college fee structures, any scholarships you want to try for and your back-up universities. Talk to your parents and tell them to give you one year in which, if you don’t get admission, you will reconsider joining the family business. Parents understand when you talk about solid plans rather than when you cry about not being able to live your dreams.

And helping out and getting involved in the family business for some time does not have to mean that you will have to leave your studies. Many people study while handling work responsibilities. It might be difficult, but it is not impossible.

You are feeling depressed because you feel trapped. The way to deal with that feeling is to take control where you can. So, start putting together daily study goals and a schedule for ECAT prep. Do practice tests. When you take action, it reduces your feelings of helplessness.

Remember that your family doubting your capabilities does not predict your future. Many engineers, doctors and professionals were told that they won’t get in. Treat those doubts as noise, not your prophecy.

You are not asking your parents for money to party and waste your life. On the contrary, you are asking for professional education, which is a legitimate request. So, approach your parents calmly and with a plan. I wish you the best of luck.

Disclaimer: If you or someone you know is in crisis and/or feeling suicidal, please go to your nearest emergency room and seek medical help immediately.

Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to: auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 8th, 2026

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It’s pretty normal to wear the same pair of jeans, a jumper or even a t-shirt more than once. But what about your socks? If you knew what really lived in your socks after even one day of wearing, you might just think twice about doing it.

Our feet are home to a microscopic rainforest of bacteria and fungi — typically containing up to 1,000 different bacterial and fungal species. The foot also has a more diverse range of fungi living on it than any other region of the human body. The foot skin also contains one of the highest amount of sweat glands in the human body.

Most foot bacteria and fungi prefer to live in the warm, moist areas between your toes, where they dine on the nutrients within your sweat and dead skin cells. The waste products produced by these microbes are the reason why feet, socks and shoes can become smelly.

For instance, the bacteria Staphylococcal hominis produces an alcohol from the sweat it consumes that makes a rotten onion smell. Staphylococcus epidermis, on the other hand, produces a compound that has a cheese smell. Corynebacterium, another member of the foot microbiome, creates an acid which is described as having a goat-like smell.

Can you wear the same pair of socks more than once?

The more our feet sweat, the more nutrients available for the foot’s bacteria to eat and the stronger the odour will be. As socks can trap sweat in, this creates an even more optimal environment for odour-producing bacteria. And these bacteria can survive on fabric for months. For instance, bacteria can survive on cotton for up to 90 days. So, if you re-wear unwashed socks, you’re only allowing more bacteria to grow and thrive.

The types of microbes resident in your socks don’t just include those that normally call the foot microbiome home. They also include microbes that come from the surrounding environment — such as your floors at home or in the gym or even the ground outside.

In a study which looked at the microbial content of clothing that had only been worn once, socks had the highest microbial count compared to other types of clothing. Socks had between eight to nine million bacteria per sample, while t-shirts only had around 83,000 bacteria per sample.

Species profiling of socks shows they harbour both harmless skin bacteria, as well as potential pathogens such as Aspergillus, Candida and Cryptococcus, which can cause respiratory and gut infections.

The microbes living in your socks can also transfer to any surface they come in contact with — including your shoes, bed, couch or floor. This means dirty socks could spread the fungus which causes Athlete’s foot, a contagious infection that affects the skin on and around the toes.

This is why it’s especially key that those with Athlete’s foot don’t share socks or shoes with other people, and avoid walking in just their socks or barefoot in gym locker rooms or bathrooms.

What’s living in your socks also colonises your shoes. This is why you might not want to wear the same pair of shoes for too many days in a row, so any sweat has time to fully dry between wears and to prevent further bacterial growth and odours.

Foot hygiene

To cut down on smelly feet and reduce the number of bacteria growing on your feet and in your socks, it’s a good idea to avoid wearing socks or shoes that make the feet sweat.

Washing your feet twice daily may help reduce foot odour by inhibiting bacterial growth. Foot antiperspirants can also help, as these stop the sweat — thereby inhibiting bacterial growth.

It’s also possible to buy socks which are directly antimicrobial to the foot bacteria. Antimicrobial socks, which contain heavy metals such as silver or zinc, can kill the bacteria which cause foot odour. Bamboo socks allow more air flow, which means sweat more readily evaporates — making the environment less hospitable for odour-producing bacteria.

Antimicrobial socks might therefore be exempt from the single-use rule, depending on their capacity to kill bacteria and fungi, and prevent sweat accumulation.

But for those who wear socks that are made out of cotton, wool or synthetic fibres, it’s best to only wear them once to prevent smelly feet and avoid foot infections.

It’s also important to make sure you’re washing your socks properly between uses. If your feet aren’t unusually smelly, it’s fine to wash them in warm water that’s between 30-40 degrees Celsius with a mild detergent. However, not all bacteria and fungi will be killed using this method. So to thoroughly sanitise socks, use an enzyme-containing detergent and wash at a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. The enzymes help to detach microbes from the socks while the high temperature kills them.

If a low temperature wash is unavoidable, then ironing the socks with a hot steam iron (which can reach temperatures of up to 180-220 degrees Celsius) is more than enough to kill any residual bacteria and inactivate the spores of any fungi — including the one that causes Athlete’s foot.

Drying the socks outdoors is also a good idea, as the  UV radiation in sunlight is antimicrobial to most sock bacteria and fungi.

While socks might be a commonly re-worn clothing item, as a microbiologist, I’d say it’s best you change your socks daily, to keep feet fresh and clean.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leicester in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 8th, 2026

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