Newest U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan Mirrors Past Plans for Retreat- Divsion of Afghanistan.

Image : An Afghan Army soldier in Kabul, the capital, one of the urban population centers that a shift in strategy is meant to safeguard. Credit Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

Newest U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan- Division of Afghanistan and Giving control to Taliban of Half of Afghanistan , Via Efforts of Pakistan and its Creation Taliban and Arab Al-Qaeda Which Gifted American bases in Afghanistan. With Poppy /  Drugs/ Cocaine Cultivation and Export via Pakistan Ports and Airports as financial System to Fund the Taliban Governance Known as strategic Depth  to Crush the Independent Governance of Pashtuns Afghans who are Crushed on both sides of Durand line by the Punjabi Establishment and their Mineral Wealth and Natural Resources are plundered and looted by Pakistan and its Creation Taliban . Al-Qaeda / ISIS will be used to keep the Taliban in check via competition . 

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country.

The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers.

The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad.

The retreat to the cities is a searing acknowledgment that the American-installed government in Afghanistan remains unable to lead and protect the country’s sprawling rural population. Over the years, as waves of American and NATO troops have come and left in repeated cycles, the government has slowly retrenched and ceded chunks of territory to the Taliban, cleaving Afghanistan into disparate parts and ensuring a conflict with no end in sight.


When he announced his new war strategy last year, Mr. Trump declared that Taliban and Islamic State insurgents in Afghanistan “need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms.”

After the declared end of combat operations in 2014, most American troops withdrew to major population areas in the country, leaving Afghan forces to defend remote outposts. Many of those bases fell in the following months.


During a news conference last month in Brussels, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, said remote outposts were being overrun by the Taliban, which was seizing local forces’ vehicles and equipment.

“There is a tension there between what is the best tactic militarily and what are the needs of the society,” General Nicholson said.

The strategy depends on the Afghan government’s willingness to pull back its own forces. A Defense Department official said some Afghan commanders have resisted the American effort to do so, fearing local populations would feel betrayed.

“Abandoning people into a situation where there is no respect for them is a violation of human rights,” said Mohammad Karim Attal, a member of the Helmand Provincial Council. “This might be the weakest point of the government that does not provide security and access to their people’s problems.”

Just over one-quarter of Afghanistan’s population lives in urban areas, according to C.I.A. estimates; Kabul is the largest city, with more than four million residents. Most Afghans live and farm across vast rural hinterlands.

Of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, the government either controls or heavily influences 229 to the Taliban’s 59. The remaining 119 districts are considered contested, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Hamdullah Mohib, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, disputed that American and Afghan forces were leaving rural areas and essentially surrendering them to the Taliban.

The intent was not to withdraw, Mr. Mohib said in an email, but to first secure the urban areas to allow security forces to later focus on rural areas.

Hundreds of Afghan troops are being killed and wounded nearly every week — many in Taliban attacks on isolated checkpoints. Over the last year alone, the number of Afghan soldiers, police, pilots and other security forces dropped by about 5 percent, or 18,000 fewer people, according to the inspector general’s office.

“This brings a very serious tension — when you’ve had significant loss of life, and blood and treasure,” said Paul Eaton, a retired two-star Army general who helped train Iraqi forces in the year after the 2003 invasion of Baghdad. “But it is time to say that we need a political outcome.”


Mr. Eaton said the plan to prod the Afghan military to abandon the unpopulated areas and retrench to cities is “a rational approach to secure the cities, and provide the Afghanistan government the political opportunity to work with the Taliban.”

The strategy for retreat borrows heavily from Mr. Obama’s military blueprint in Afghanistan after he began withdrawing troops from front lines in 2014.


Under President George W. Bush, and during Mr. Obama’s first term, the Pentagon established a constellation of outposts across Afghanistan, affirming that the American-led military coalition would fight the war in far-flung villages and farmlands.

In 2006, the United States Army set up a string of small bases in the Korengal Valley — an effort that was planned in part by General Nicholson, who was a colonel at the time.

But by 2009, an Army document outlined a shift from “attacking the enemy in remote areas” to “protecting and developing the major population centers” in eastern Afghanistan.

That approach began to take hold months later, in 2010, when American forces withdrew from the Korengal Valley after suffering bloody losses in isolated northeastern outposts. At the same time, however, United States Marines were surging into the rural areas of Helmand Province and the Army was pushing into the Taliban heartland in Kandahar.


In 2015, the Obama administration encouraged Afghan commanders to give up defending some of the most remote checkpoints and outposts that were seen as difficult to reclaim and hold. General Nicholson supported the idea after he took command in 2016, the official said.

Should Afghan troops pull back now, defending remote pockets of the country would mostly be left to the local police, which are more poorly trained than the military and far more vulnerable to Taliban violence. In some areas, police officers have cut deals with the Taliban to protect themselves from attacks.

Ghulam Sarwar Haidari, the former deputy police chief of northwestern Badghis Province, said his forces withdrew from the small town of Dara-e-bom after the Afghan National Army abandoned their outposts in past months. “We should lose 100 lives to retake that area,” he said.

Not all of the roughly 14,000 United States troops currently in Afghanistan have pulled back to cities. Some who are training and advising Afghan troops as part of Mr. Trump’s war strategy are stationed in bases in remote areas and smaller towns.

Mr. Trump has long called for ending the war in Afghanistan and only reluctantly accepted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s advice to send an additional 4,000 troops in an attempt to claim victory.

The Trump administration is also instructing top American diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban to refuel negotiations to end the war, and two senior Taliban officials said on Saturday that such talks had been held in Qatar a week ago. If they happen, the negotiations would be a major shift in American policy and would serve as a bridge to an eventual withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan.

Evan McAllister, a former reconnaissance Marine staff sergeant and sniper, fought in parts of Helmand Province in 2008 and 2011 — areas that are now almost entirely under Taliban control. He said trying to maintain an Afghan government-friendly presence in rural areas was, and still is, a “fool’s errand.”

“Attempting to control rural areas in Afghanistan always eventually ends up boiling down to simple personal survival,” Mr. McAllister said. “No strategic gains are accomplished, no populace is influenced, but the death or dismemberment of American and Afghan troops is permanent and guaranteed.”

Authors : C.J. Chivers contributed reporting. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, and Najim Rahim from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Printed / Source :  New York Times

China’s Global Building Spree Runs Into Trouble in Pakistan

By Jeremy Page and  Saeed Shah
July 22, 2018 1:27 p.m. ET

To fund a 70-nation infrastructure initiative, Beijing has been extending loans in opaque deals often contingent on using Chinese contractors and Trapping Pakistan in Debt Burdon that will only Benefit the Chinese Banks and also Arm Twist Pakistan into selling its Assets , like Gwadar Port for 99 Year Lease and Making Pakistan a slave Nation under Chinese Imperialism reminding of Ming Dynasty . 

The Punjabis Running Pakistan as Mullah and Military Alliances and the Right Wing Political parties like PTI , PML, MMA , MQM , PSP and Taliban Aligned Parties are all controlled by GHQ and they are selling the Assets of Baluchistan and Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit and Baltistan Provinces that are out of Punjab for the Money making Schemes of Punjabis . 


LAHORE, Pakistan—Pakistan’s first metro, the Orange Line, was meant to be an early triumph in China’s quest to supplant U.S. influence here and redraw the world’s geopolitical map.
Financed and built by Chinese state-run companies, the soon-to-be-finished overhead railway through Lahore is among the first projects in China’s $62 billion plan for Pakistan. Beijing hoped the $2 billion air-conditioned metro, sweeping past crumbling relics of Mughal and British imperial rule, would help make Pakistan a showcase for its global infrastructure-building spree.
Instead, it has become emblematic of the troubles that are throwing China’s modern-day Silk Road initiative off course.

Deepening Debt

Pakistan’s external debt and the money it needs to borrow yearly have increased sharply, partly due to the infrastructure program China launched there in 2015.

Three years into China’s program here, Pakistan is heading for a debt crisis, caused in part by a surge in Chinese loans and imports for projects like the Orange Line, which Pakistani officials say will require public subsidies to operate.

China’s global plan, called the “Belt and Road Initiative,” involves some 70 countries and has been likened to the U.S. Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. By building a network of ports, railways, roads and pipelines, China aims to open new East-West trade routes, generate business for Chinese companies and expand its strategic influence.

While the Americans mainly used grants in Postwar Europe, China has mostly extended loans in opaque deals often contingent on using Chinese contractors. Pakistan is now one of several countries grappling with the financial and political fallout of taking on so much Chinese debt.

With a general election in Pakistan scheduled for July 25, an ascendant opposition is pledging to publish secret details about the financing of Chinese projects, including the Orange Line, and Pakistani industry is agitating for less-generous perks for Chinese companies.

Pakistani authorities have fallen behind on payments for electricity from new Chinese power projects—the bulk of the infrastructure program—because of longstanding problems getting Pakistanis to pay their bills, according to a senior Pakistani official.

The problems are expected to come to a head by early fall, when Pakistan’s new government is likely to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the nation’s first since 2013, according to Pakistani officials. Such a bailout would likely include restrictions on borrowing and spending, the officials say, which would force the country to curtail its Belt and Road program with China, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC.

That would be a big embarrassment for China, which has portrayed its plan as a game-changer for this chronically unstable nation of 200 million—and a chance to prove the benefits of its development model to other nations.

Game Changer?

Three years into China's $62 billion infrastructure program in Pakistan, about half of the planned projects have been started.“You’re then effectively having the West bail out this country,” says Andrew Small, an expert on China-Pakistan relations at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank. “If this is where Pakistan ends up financially, I think that’s going to be a big kind of black mark against the entire Belt and Road.”
It also would give the U.S., the largest contributor to the IMF, a strong influence over China’s plans in Pakistan. Washington has been pushing back against what U.S. officials have called Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy.”
European Union and Indian officials also have stepped up criticism of Belt and Road, saying it lacks transparency and sustainability and is designed to expand China’s strategic influence.
“The Ming Dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular manner, demanding other nations become tribute states, kowtowing to Beijing,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in June.
Chinese President Xi Jinping rejects such criticism, telling a conference in April his infrastructure program was neither a Chinese conspiracy nor a would-be Marshall Plan, but an attempt to build a “community of shared future.”
China’s foreign ministry said in a written statement to The Wall Street Journal that its Pakistan program remained a model for Belt and Road countries. “Naturally, it will have to adapt to changing conditions, and necessary adjustments will be carried out,” it said, adding that China was in close contact with Pakistan on its financial situation.
China's Infrastructure Initiative
China is building and financing a global network of trade and energy links to fill gaps in existing infrastructure spanning Asia, Europe and Africa.

In Malaysia, the second-biggest recipient of Belt and Road loans after Pakistan, a new government suspended work this month on a $20 billion Chinese railway project and is reviewing other Chinese projects. Myanmar is trying to renegotiate a $10 billion Chinese port project. Nepal has halted plans for two Chinese-built hydroelectric dams since November.
Chinese projects in Pakistan now vulnerable to chopping include an $8 billion railway upgrade central to Beijing’s vision of a new overland trade route, which would link China’s northwest to Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, Pakistani officials say. The upgrade aimed to double the average speed on 1,170 miles of track between the port of Karachi and the northern city of Peshawar.
“I can’t see how the money would be repaid” for the upgrade, says one senior Pakistani official involved in discussions with China.

The IMF also would likely require Pakistan’s new government to be more transparent about existing CPEC projects. Critics of the outgoing government accused it of channeling funds to wasteful political projects, often in opaque deals, without competitive bidding.
“Deals like the Orange Line cannot be secret,” says Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, spokesman for the main opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He says his party backed CPEC but wanted all agreements put before the parliament for review.

Pakistan’s outgoing government blames its debt crisis on an overvalued rupee, and it questions Western motives in criticizing Chinese loans. “Before China came along, they weren’t worried about Third World debt,” says Miftah Ismail, the departing finance minister.
The U.S. helped build Pakistan’s infrastructure in the 1950s and 60s, when it saw the country as a Cold War ally. More recently, Washington focused on other economic aid and security assistance to fight groups such as the Taliban.

All Benefits to Chinese Banks and IMF and Punjab in Pakistan 

With the U.S. freezing all security aid and winding down economic support this year, Pakistani officials now say its financial future lies in emulating China’s emergence as a low-cost manufacturing hub. CPEC, they say, will ease energy and transport bottlenecks, paving the way for Chinese-style “special economic zones” to lure foreign investors.

Thousands of Chinese nationals are working on China’s infrastructure program Pakistan, including at a giant coal mine and power project in the Thar desert in Sindh province.
Thousands of Chinese nationals are working on China’s infrastructure program Pakistan, including at a giant coal mine and power project in the Thar desert in Sindh province.

Beijing and Islamabad say that of 43 CPEC projects due to be finished by 2030, around half—worth $19 billion—are completed or under way, including a dozen power plants. Much of the infrastructure is badly needed, especially the energy projects, which will help ease Pakistan’s chronic electricity shortages.

Even so, some ministers in the outgoing government said in interviews they should have negotiated better terms with China, and been more open about details.

Official figures reviewed by the Journal show that Chinese-backed power plants were promised annual returns on investment of up to 34%, guaranteed by Pakistan’s government, in dollars, for 30 years.

There is skepticism about government forecasts that CPEC will boost economic growth from 5.8% this year to 7% by 2023, allowing Pakistan to service its debt. A March IMF report blamed Pakistan’s rising current-account deficit and external debt obligations partly on CPEC, and predicted growth would flatline at 5% until 2023.

“The new government will have to do some adjustment, with us or without us,” says Teresa Daban, the IMF representative in Pakistan.

Pakistan could seek a bailout from China. Chinese banks have already provided $3 billion in emergency funds, at commercial rates, to stabilize Pakistani foreign-exchange reserves, Pakistani officials say.

Nadeem Javaid, chief economist of Pakistan’s planning ministry, suggests China should rescue Pakistan with an interest-free loan. “It would be a kind of favor,” he says. If not, “for what do we have this friendship?”

Another senior Pakistani official says an IMF bailout would need to be $8 billion to $10 billion. The outgoing government, he says, “made lots of attempts” to negotiate a Chinese bailout instead, but the Chinese disengaged in recent weeks because they wanted to deal with the new government after the election.

A Chinese bailout could keep Beijing’s plans intact but would set a worrying precedent. Chinese banks have provided at least $200 billion of loans to Belt and Road projects since 2013, Chinese officials say.

The rationale has been partly to generate better returns for Chinese banks than they can obtain at home, and to drum up overseas business to use China’s surplus industrial capacity.
Gwadar, a port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Gwadar, a port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Some Chinese bankers and officials, though, are growing more concerned about the financial risk of Belt and Road projects, according to people familiar with those discussions.

In its latest guidance to Chinese companies investing in Pakistan, published in March, China’s tax administration warned that Pakistan’s capacity to repay debts “is extremely low.” Returns on Chinese investments in Pakistan were “very low, and some may become bad debts,” it said.
A Chinese bailout could feed worries that Beijing is using Belt and Road to extract onerous concessions, including equity in strategically important assets.

Sri Lanka’s government, unable to repay a Chinese loan for a port in Hambantota city, last year granted a Chinese state company a 99-year lease on the facility. U.S. and Indian officials have long thought China wants a naval outpost there, which China denies.

Trade Imbalance

China’s trade surplus with Pakistan has grown by more than 400% since the two countries signed a free-trade agreement in 2006.

They now suspect China could do the same at Gwadar, a port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast that is part of CPEC and that Chinese and Pakistani officials say is purely commercial.

Some diplomats believe Beijing will keep throwing money at Pakistan, regardless of the returns. China and Pakistan have had close ties since the 1950s, when each saw the other as a counterweight to India.

More recently, China has been anxious to prevent Islamic extremism spreading from Pakistan into China. Still, China’s goals depend on political stability in Pakistan, which requires strong economic growth to create jobs.

One problem is that Pakistan has yet to establish any of the planned “special economic zones.” With local business wary of Chinese competition, provincial governments won’t agree to generous incentives China wants for its private companies to invest in them.

The Karakoram Highway, which China helped to build between 1959 and 1979 and is now upgrading, is the only land route between Pakistan and China.

The Karakoram Highway, which China helped to build between 1959 and 1979 and is now upgrading, is the only land route between Pakistan and China.

Many Pakistani and Chinese business leaders are skeptical about Pakistan’s potential as a trade route, especially if railway upgrades are canceled. The only land route across the border into western China is a two-lane road over the 16,000-foot Khunjerab Pass. It is closed four months of the year by snow, and passes through a region claimed by India. On a recent visit, a Journal reporter saw little traffic.
At the other end of the proposed route, Gwadar has failed to attract significant cargo traffic.

A visiting Journal reporter found that work hadn’t started on a planned power plant and airport. Locals complained of a shortage of jobs and drinking water.

Chinese officials have grown accustomed to the security challenges in Pakistan. It is the politics that frustrates them more.

They single out the Orange Line, which wasn’t in the original CPEC plan. It was added at the insistence of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who saw it as a vote winner in Punjab, his power base. China eventually agreed, with Premier Li Keqiang describing it as a “gift,” Pakistani officials say.

Shehbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab province and brother of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, lobbied personally for the Orange Line and attended a test run in May.

he Export-Import Bank of China provided a $1.6 billion loan—local media reports pegged the interest rate at just 2%—on the condition the contract went to two state-run Chinese companies. They were exempted from income tax, sales tax and import duties on construction materials.

Sibtain Halim, Pakistan’s official in charge of the Orange Line, says no other countries expressed interest in bidding. He says the project will benefit Lahore but will require government subsidies, although how much remains unclear because ticket prices haven’t been decided.

Opposition parties complained that CPEC disproportionately benefited Punjab. To appease them, China agreed in late 2016 to build metros for three more cities—Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi—each controlled by opposition parties and often racked by violence.

Beijing had hoped the Orange Line and other early projects would be finished in time to help secure victory for Pakistan’s ruling party in July, according to people involved. Last year, however, Nawaz Sharif was dismissed as prime minister and this month was sentenced to 10 years in jail for corruption.

Work on the Orange Line was halted for 22 months after a legal challenge from activists who said it came too close to historic sites. Chinese officials were “perplexed,” says one person involved in the project. “They said that in China, no one can touch a government project.”

Although work resumed in December, the opposition continues to demand investigations into Orange Line contracts.

“The real reason for building these loss-making megaprojects has always been massive kickbacks,” Imran Khan, the main opposition leader, said on Twitter in March.

The Sharifs, and Pakistani and Chinese officials, deny that, and Mr. Khan has produced no proof. The controversy leaves Beijing in an uncomfortable spot as Pakistan’s military appears to have thrown its weight behind Mr. Khan.

At an Orange Line test run in May, Shehbaz Sharif —Nawaz’s brother and his party’s new candidate for premier—repeated a promise to build metros for Karachi and Peshawar, despite Pakistan’s debt crisis.

“My crime is that I made this Orange Line for the people,” Shehbaz told supporters, standing in front of a banner decorated with his portrait alongside President Xi’s.

Writers :  Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com and Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com

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Pakhtunkhwa Police Reforms Myth and Reality

Politics is the art of perception management. Politicians often employ the old tried and tested advertisement techniques of repeating certain phrases or sentences umpteen times till the listeners believe them as a matter of truth. “We made police misali in the K-P province” is one such piece of mythology that has become an essential part of list of achievements presented by Imran Khan. I am proud of serving the police department for almost 30 years but in my capacity as a former home secretary and having held senior positions in the K-P police, I deem it as my duty to put the record straight by differentiating the myth from reality.

The last two governments that served the province were of the PTI (2013-2018) and the ANP (2008-2013). I would, therefore, briefly review the nature of reforms introduced by these two governments and the financial injections provided in each of the tenures.

Let us first look at the situation that existed in the country and the K-P province in 2008. The Taliban outfits had established parallel governments in many districts of K-P province and were regularly attacking personnel and premises of the law-enforcement agencies. In such an environment of real and imminent danger, the then provincial ANP government rightly considered revamping and rebuilding of the police department its top priority. It, therefore, developed a “Comprehensive Development Strategy and Post Needs Crisis Assessment Programme” with the assistance of the World Bank. As money makes the mare go, the ANP government enhanced the budget of the police besides increasing its Annual Development Programme. We can notice that financial resource allocation reached its peak in 2010-11 during the ANP’s government. With more finances available, the police force acquired better human resource as the number of police personnel swelled to 75,000 in 2013 from 32,000 in 2006-7, which is a staggering increase of 134 per cent. In order to achieve reforms-related targets, a ‘Project Coordination Unit’ was also established which empowered the police force to initiate and run its developmental schemes.

Besides recruitment, capacity building was another important strategic priority for the-then ANP government. As the existing training centres could not accommodate such huge numbers, arrangements were made in collaboration with the Army for imparting training. Another strategic priority was to raise a counterterrorism force and within a short span of time a highly trained Anti-terrorism Elite Force was raised with 7,000 members. In the same period, a state-of-the art ‘Joint Training Centre’, with the assistance of the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, was built in Nowshehra which is now the main training feeder for the anti-terrorism personnel. The Directorate of Counter Terrorism was established which played a crucial role in bringing hundreds of terrorists to justice and in preparing a database of 3,500 militants with 350 of them being the highly wanted terrorists. To improve the physical infrastructure, the damaged buildings of the police in the whole of Malakand were reconstructed under the US-assisted Rule of Law and Peace Building programme. In a nutshell, by 2013, a highly well-developed police system was in place to tackle the law and order situation.

Now let us turn to the 2013-18 period of the PTI government and examine what specific reforms were initiated and executed by this government. PTI leader Imran Khan, in his speeches, and also in the manifesto, had vowed that the Station House Officer (SHO) system would be replaced by the US-styled sheriff system where the SHOs would be elected by the local people. Nothing of such sort came about in the PTI’s era. We, however, did see some pictures being splashed on social media pages of the party showing a model police station on the pattern of police stations in the developed countries to create a perception that the K-P police have been modernised to an extent. The reality on ground is that the buildings of main police stations in Peshawar, let alone smaller cities, are still in dilapidated condition. People, however, did see greater presence of traffic police personnel but that was possible due to the additions made to the police force by the previous government. Therefore, the credit should go to whom it belongs. In the PTI’s tenure, the police force’s strength reached 82,000, thus registering an increase of 9 per cent which dwarfs in comparison with what the ANP government did in its tenure. The ‘Directorate of Counter Terrorism’ was renamed as ‘Counter Terrorism Department’ making it a focal agency against terrorism and thus relieving the police stations. Hence, the main channel of collecting intelligence and interaction with the community was absolved of its duties. The much-needed forensic lab got completely neglected while the safe city project did not either materialise for improving policing in the KP province.

In terms of financial support, we can see from figures that the growth momentum fell sharply and reached its lowest in 2015-2016 during the PTI’s government. Rather than introducing any substantive reforms, a high-pitched and well-organised propaganda was unleashed to create a perception that the previous government had done very little to provide peace and security to the people. The comparative analysis would, however, make it clear that myths can’t stand long when exposed to the light of facts and evidence.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 22nd, 2018.

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