Pakistani Identity System Down |
There is a sentence every Pakistani knows too well: “System down hai.” It echoes from Karachi to Khyber with the same resigned shrug, the same helpless tone, and the same acceptance that the country’s most essential state institution is, once again, not functioning. What should have been Pakistan’s most reliable digital backbone has instead become its most predictable point of collapse. Across the world, identity authorities operate with near-perfect uptime. In Pakistan, the national identity system goes offline with the regularity of a power cut. And when NADRA goes down, the country follows.
In January 2023, a NADRA server failure triggered a nationwide biometric outage that paralysed the banking sector. Customers stood helplessly at ATMs and service counters as banks announced they could not verify identities because NADRA’s database had crashed. Financial transactions froze not due to a cyberattack, but a routine institutional breakdown.
Months later, airport immigration stalled as verification systems failed mid-operation. Passengers missed flights, terminals backed up, and officers waited for the network to “come back online,” the digital version of hoping the generator would kick in. That same year, telecom companies issued national alerts suspending SIM issuance because NADRA’s biometric system was down yet again.
These headline failures mirror the daily frustrations of ordinary citizens. NADRA’s much-promoted online app........