Dense fog paralysing life in Rawalpindi and Islamabad is no longer an episodic winter inconvenience but a familiar annual disruption. Flight cancellations, traffic chaos, school closures, and health advisories now arrive with predictable regularity, as though woven into the seasonal calendar. The capital region’s struggle with visibility and air quality once again exposes how ill-prepared urban centres remain for environmental stressors that are no longer exceptional.

This is hardly an isolated phenomenon. Lahore and several other cities across Punjab are grappling with the same........

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