South Asia Investor Review

In a New York Times Op Ed titled " How Not to Engage With Pakistan ",  ex US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard G. Olson says "Its (CPEC's) magnitude and its transformation of parts of Pakistan dwarf anything the United States has ever undertaken".  Olson goes on to warn the  Trump Administration  that "Without  Pakistani cooperation , our (US) army in Afghanistan risks becoming a beached whale". Among the parts of Pakistan being transformed by China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are some of the least developed regions in Balochistan and Sindh, specifically Gwadar and Thar Desert. Here is more on these regions: Gwadar Port City: Gwadar is booming. It's being called the  next Shenzhen  by some and  the next Hong Kong  by others as an emerging new port city in the region to  rival Dubai . Land prices in Gwadar are skyrocketing, according to  media reports . Gwadar Airport  air traffic growth  of 73% was the fastest of ...

India's former RAW officers, including one ex chief, have blamed  Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav , arrested by Pakistan in 2016, for getting caught in Pakistan as a "result of unprofessionalism", according to a report in India's "The Quint" owned and operated by a joint venture of Bloomberg News and Quintillion Media. The report that appeared briefly on The Quint website has since been removed, apparently under pressure from the Indian government. The Quint Story: Indian Agent Kulbhushan Jadhav The story quotes a former RAW chief as saying that the “proposal to recruit Jadhav for operations, whatever it’s worth, was ridiculous.”  However, the report said that "(Jadhav's) recruitment was approved by a joint secretary as the supervisory officer.  The RAW has a special unit which also undertakes parallel operations in certain crucial target countries for which it seeks out its own recruits". Several experienced RAW hands told the Quint tha...

General David Petraeus, former CIA director and commander and US Forces in Afghanistan, has rejected  President Donald Trump's charges of  "lies and deceit"  against Pakistan.  He did so back in late 2016. Here's a brief excerpt of what he said: "I looked very very hard then (as US commander in Afghanistan) and again as CIA director at the nature of the relationship between the various (militant) groups in FATA and Baluchistan and the Pakistan Army and the ISI and I was never convinced of what  certain journalists  have alleged (about ISI support of militant groups in FATA).... I have talked to them (journalists) asked them what their sources are and I have not been able to come to grips with that based on what I know from these different positions (as US commander and CIA director)". Here's a short video clip of it: https://youtu.be/01ghm5V3Wn4 Here's a longer blog post I wrote about it back in November, 2016 after Petraeus spoke at the ...

President Donald Trump's  first new year tweet  in 2018 accused Pakistan of "nothing but lies and deceit". This is not new.  Back in 2011, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a US Senate Hearing was asked by Senator Patrick Leahy about  Pakistan's "lies"  to the United States. Here's how the exchange went: SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: How long do we support governments that lie to us? When do we say enough is enough? SEC ROBERT GATES: Well, first of all, I would say, based on 27 years in CIA and four and a half years in this job, most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done. LEAHY: Do they also arrest the people that help us when they say they're allies? GATES: Sometimes. LEAHY: Not often. GATES: And -- and sometimes they send people to spy on us, and they're our close allies. So... LEAHY: And we give aid to them. GATES: ... that's the real world that we deal with. Is the United States always truthful w...

Per capita income in Pakistan, often described as a "failed state",  grew  22% from 2012 to 2017 , according to data from  international sources . This is remarkable given major security challenges and particularly bad press the country has had to deal with during this period.  Also remarkable is the fact that the share of  income of the poorest 20%  has grown faster than other economies in Asia. Pakistan GDP PPP Per Capita. Source: World Bank Per Capita Incomes in Large Economies: China PPP per capita income grew the fastest at 48%, followed by India 43%, Turkey 32%, Indonesia 23%, Pakistan 22%, United Kingdom, United States and Japan 15%,  Germany and Canada 13%, France 11%, Saudi Arabia 10%, Greece 9.5%, Russia and Italy 8%,  Nigeria 7.5% and Brazil 0%. In the 5 year period 2001 to 2006 prior to the outbreak of the current wave of terrorism, Pakistan  per capita income grew 36% , much faster than the 22% in the last 5 years. Thi...

Pakistan's Central Power Purchasing Agency's report shows that General Electric's 9HA-Class turbines produced only half of their capacity this August, according to Reuters. Power executives and government officials in the country said the GE turbines had operational issues like long outages and production delays. GE Turbine Problems: Bhikki Power Plant, Punjab, Pakistan The GE turbine problems affected three key plants – Bhikki of Punjab government and Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah of the federal government – with a total capacity of 3,600MW that are considered crucial to end  load shedding  within the ruling PMLN's 5-year term ending middle of 2018. Consequences For Pakistan: Pakistan's government is failing to deliver on its promise to end load-shedding this year because of serious issues with GE's 9HA-Class turbine. "It had terrible consequences because we lost a lot of power which would have come to the grid during the peak summer,"...

Islamophobia is no longer extreme; the year 2017 saw it go mainstream in Europe, India, the United States and several other parts of the world. Openly Islamophobic Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States in 2017. India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh elected rabidly anti-Muslim chief minister Yogi Adiyanath who was hand-picked by Muslim-hating Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2017.  Neo-Nazis made significant electoral gains with their anti-Islam rhetoric in several European nations while Burma and Israel continued to get away with the  murder of  innocent Muslim civilians  in 2017. These alarming trends are reminiscent of the rise of Nazi Party led by  Germany's Adolf Hitler  who brought disaster to Europe and the rest of the world less than a century ago. Trump's Muslim Ban: The year of Islamophobia began in earnest on January 20, 2017 with the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump who called for "total and com...