While Gilgit is geographically essential to CPEC’s success and Pakistani authorities pledged development along the highway, none materialized. Nor did promised opportunities in terms of education, employment and welfare materialize. Instead, Pakistan’s major political parties have siphoned off most of the cash and the associated projects to their own political strongholds in Punjab, Sindh, and […]
For the first time in over two decades, Pakistan is not a foreign-policy priority for a new US administration… This new reality raises the important question of how the United States should think about its relationship with Pakistan. A country of more than 200 million people, Pakistan is geo-strategically located at the mouth of the […]
As rising Chinese investment promises to boost Pakistan’s ailing economy in an hour of need, there are concurrent nationalistic concerns expressed by local businesses and groups that Chinese investors are cornering key local industries, state assets and businesses to the detriment of Pakistani players and interests. Read Here | Asia Times
Pakistan’s army is set to take near-total control of the Beijing-financed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$60 billion infrastructure building plan replete with railways, roads, ports and special economic zones (SEZs) that is key to China’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Read Here | Asia Times
Many Pakistanis see the army as the real power behind Khan and the cause of the country’s political and economic woes. Their anger has occasioned a remarkable shift as major political figures speak out for the first time against the military’s dominance of Pakistan—a shift that could eventually threaten the military’s chokehold on political power. […]
When General Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s president in 2008, many had hoped the nation’s coup-riddled politics were headed in a decidedly more democratic direction. Fast forward to the present, Pakistan has moved from a brief period as a functional electoral democracy to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s “hybrid” regime, where elected and military officials […]
The transition from US President Donald Trump to Joe Biden inspires equal measures of hope and fear in Pakistan given the president-elect’s expressed views on rights, equality and democracy. Analysts say Pakistan’s ability to balance ties with the US and China amid growing friction between the two superpowers will also set the tone for the […]
Gradually the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) government is losing its grip on power, as the political opposition not only has pushed it on to the back foot but has also weakened the military establishment’s control of the power chessboard. On Sunday, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), and alliance of opposition parties, held its third massive public gathering, this time […]
This speech of Sharif’s has raised the temperature of the politics of Pakistan and now it is the government of Imran Khan, General Bajwa and General Faiz that is feeling the heat. A defiant Sharif ready to lock horns with the current leadership of the establishment was the last thing Khan would have wanted, as his survival […]
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, has been the focus of heated debate among observers of Asia — and, in particular, South Asia — since its announcement in 2013. Proponents of the project in China and Pakistan describe CPEC as a “gamechanger” that will uplift Pakistan and adjacent areas of China and perhaps even reshape […]
looking beyond borders 