South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan has historically enjoyed close friendly ties with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. So why did the three nations feel the need to formalize these ties with a mutual defense agreement in Mecca this week? Many answers to this question can all be traced to a fundamental change in the security environment in the Middle East. Foremost among these changes is the extremely reckless behavior of the state of Israel which has had full political, military, economic and diplomatic backing of the West. This unqualified western support began with the  Gaza genocide  and culminated in the launch of joint US-Israeli assault on Iran in February this year.   The entire Middle East region and the Islamic world has helplessly witnessed as the Israeli military butchered innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon and threatened to expand the war to the entire region. Some Israeli politicians issued warnings to Turkey and Pakistan. During this period, the West not only failed to restrain Israe...

As the war enters 12th day, both the Israeli and the US militaries are using AI to accelerate decision-making, analyzing vast amounts of intelligence data for generating targets, and optimizing logistics, shifting toward AI-enabled command structures to maintain battlefield superiority. Almost all major US AI data center operators have signed contracts to provide AI tools and services to both the Pentagon and the IDF. This arrangement has not gone unnoticed by the Iranians who are now targeting  AI data centers  in the Middle East.  Data Centers in Gulf States. Source: Bloomberg Last week, three data centers operated by AmazonWeb Services (AWS), two in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain, were struck by Iranian drones or missiles. The attacks forced the facilities offline and led to service outages affecting banking, payments, delivery apps, and enterprise software across the region, according to a  Fortune  magazine report.  The U.S. military uses ...

As the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rolls out "Nakbah 2023", a former senior US diplomat has been caught on a viral video telling an Arab street food vendor in New York that the killing of 4,000 Palestinian children in Gaza is "not enough". The video shows Stuart Seldowitz, who worked on the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Barack Obama, beginning by insulting Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the Holy Quran, and then goes on a hateful anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian tirade. Seldowitz also served as deputy director/senior political officer in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003. This incident raises the question: Is Islamophobia shaping the US policy in the Middle East and South Asia regions?  Stuart Seldowitz, Former US Senior National Security Official US-Pakistan Ties: US-Pakistan relations hit an all-time low during the Obama years when Stuart Seldowitz w...

As Israeli military pounds  Gaza  and kills large numbers of Palestinian men, women and children yet again, the western media and politicians are busy white-washing the Israeli crimes by repeating the same old mantra: "Israel has a right to defend itself". There's little mention of the decades-long occupation and continuing brutalization of the Palestinian people by the Israelis. Nor is there any discussion of how the West is culpable in this long-running injustice. To put the current events in perspective, let us examine how we got to where we are today.  The foundation of the state of Israel as we know it now was laid when the British government issued a public statement in 1917 called the "Balfour Declaration" in support of the creation of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This came at a time when the First World War was still ranging and Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire. The Balfour Declaration was contained in a l...

What is the importance of the Middle East for the West? Is it energy resources to fuel the  industrialized West ? Or the key trade and shipping routes passing through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal used by ships to sail from Asia to Europe and North America? Map of Greater Middle East (Morocco to Pakistan) Why is oil, the most traded commodity, priced and traded in  US Dollars ? Does oil trade help maintain the US Dollar as the international trade and reserve currency and solidify US control of the global financial system, giving the US a very powerful tool to control the world? What is the history of West's involvement in the Middle East? Can it be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in early 20th century? When did the United States take over where  Britain and France  left off? Cold War? Iranian leader Mosaddegh's overthrow by CIA? Suez Crisis? Energy revolution is in full swing in  Silicon Valley  with widespread use of so...

‘Digital Silk Road’ project is one of 12 sub-themes agreed to at the recently concluded  Belt Road Forum 2019 (BRF19)  in Beijing. This state-of-the-art information superhighway will involve laying fiber optic cables in Pakistan which will connect with China in the north and link with Africa and the Arab World via undersea cable to be laid from Gwadar Deep Sea Port built as part of  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) . The global project will include 5G wireless networks deployment in BRI (Belt Road Initiative) member nations. China-Pakistan Fiber Optic Cable Route Fiber Optic Cables: The laying of 820 kilometer long China-Pakistan  fiber optic cable  has already been laid between the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan in the south and the Khunjerab Pass, China in the north  and operational since July, 2018. By 2020, the 6,299 kilometers of underwater cables will extend to Djibouti from Gwadar and form the Digital Silk Route between Asia and Afric...

How did Pakistan's  political landscape  change in 2018? Have the Sharif family and the PMLN been marginalized? How was the security situation after continuing decline of terror fatalities since 2013? How has PTI done so far? Will NAB-led accountability of politicians continue or intensify in 2019? How will Imran Khan's government deal with the fact that the Zardari-led  PPP rules Sind ? Will President Arif Alvi impose governor's rule under the Constitution's article 234 or financial emergency under the  Constitution's article 235  in Sindh province? Why is financial emergency more likely? How will PPP leadership react to such a move? President  Trump  has reportedly already decided to remove US troops from Afghanistan after a similar decision on American troops pull-out from Syria. Will Trump actually pull bulk of US troops from Afghanistan? How will it affect the situation there? Can Afghan government survive without the presence of US troops? Wh...

What is Ramadan all about? Is it only about abstaining from food and drink in the daylight hours? What is the key message for this Ramzan ? Isn't respecting Huqooq-ul-Ibad (human rights of others) as important as observing Huqooq-ul-Allah (Duties to Allah such as prayer and fasting) for each Muslim? What must Muslims do this Ramzan to fulfill all of their obligations to Allah and His creation? What does the Economic Survey of Pakistan say about Pakistan's GDP, per capita income, infrastructure development, education and other important indicators? What must Pakistani leaders do to ensure greater focus on and investment in education and not just in infrastructure ? What is the size of and the key priorities in Pakistan's budget for 2017-18? Should some of the $20 billion (out of the $50 billion budget) for infrastructure be allocated to education to boost Pakistan's stagnant literacy and school enrollment rates? Why is India losing IT jobs at a rate of 200,000 ...

Much is being written about the potential for the spread of political upheaval that started in Tunisia and recently led to the end of the 30 years rule of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Most of the commentary and punditry has so far been focused on potential political instability forced by possibly massive street protests. Political fall-out from the events in Tunisia and Egypt has already engulfed the Middle Eastern nations of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. However, little attention has so far been paid to the more immediate impact of spreading trouble in the oil-rich Middle East on developing nations in South Asia and elsewhere. Crude oil prices have been rising for some time but the fears of the spread of the political unrest have accelerated the rate of increase. The price of crude has already crossed the crucial $100 a barrel mark with the Libyan crisis in full bloom. South Asian economies are keeping a close eye on the situation in Africa and Middle East but still remain unaffec...

Internet services have been disrupted in parts of the Middle East after damage to an undersea cable in the Mediterranean. There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, a government official told Reuters. There was also disruption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press. India also suffered up to 60% disruption, a national industry body told Reuters news agency. Blogger Masud Reza from Pakistan is reporting that Pakistan is also affected by this outage. Mesud's post says: "At approx. 11:30am today, the SMW4 Segment 4 Sumbarine Cable went down due to a fiber cut between Marseille and Palermo due to which the Internet connectivity in Pakistan is severely affected. At this moment, TWA1 customers are suffering the most. PTCL has switched it's Internet traffic from SMW4 to SMW3. Let's hope that this fault is repaired soon since degraded Internet service cripples internet for business. Update: A ship has lef...