Malik Hussain Riaz likes to do things big. The property tycoon has built sprawling, private-housing developments in practically every city in his native Pakistan. In Lahore he has built the country’s third largest mosque. In Karachi he has built the country’s tallest tower. And now, he has been forced into accepting the biggest ever settlement […]
This week CapX is republishing some of our favourite articles of the year. This piece first appeared on June 8. Just a few years ago the smart thing to say about Pakistan was that the days of military coups were behind it. “It can’t happen,” the then US ambassador to Islamabad told me in 2012. […]
Pity Pakistan. In recent weeks it has suffered one of its worst ever terrorist attacks, with 149 people blown to bits. The rupee is crashing as the economy teeters on the brink of a debt crisis. And the country has been put on an international financial watchlist because of its failure to take action against […]
Just a few years ago the smart thing to say about Pakistan was that the days of military coups were behind it. “It can’t happen,” the then US ambassador to Islamabad told me in 2012. “For one thing, there are too many TV stations. Think of how many they would have to take off air!” […]
“Old Silk Road”, declares the sign by the side of the road in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley. An arrow points towards what was once the greatest artery of ancient global commerce. The sign has become a stopping spot for adventurous tourists experiencing the Karakorum Highway, the road to China that crosses one of the world’s highest […]
How do you solve a problem like Pakistan, an economic basket case whose only world-beating industry is the production and export of jihadist terrorists? Why, throw money at the problem of course! For 16 years that has been the approach of US policymakers, who have lavished billions of dollars on the country in the hope […]
On Sunday night, Pakistan made one of the most abject capitulations to radical Islamists in its 70 year history. For three weeks, thousands of extremists had merrily challenged the writ of the state by blockading one of the main entrances into Islamabad, the capital. Supposedly protesting against an inconsequential tweak to a law designed to […]
Donald Trump has just learned the hard way how much easier it is to be an armchair general than the commander in chief. When you’re a blowhard property developer with a Twitter account calling time on America’s longest war must seem like plain common sense. “We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure […]
It is a fair to assume that Nawaz Sharif will never be written up in a Harvard School of Government case study. The former prime minister of Pakistan, who was stripped of office on Friday by the Supreme Court, did precious little to reform an underperforming economy that only really works for the fabulously rich […]
Miles of elevated concrete viaducts are sprouting up around some of Lahore’s architectural jewels as construction teams race to finish the Pakistani city’s first ever metro system. Heritage lovers are horrified that the $1.6bn train line will block views of the seventeenth-century Chauburji monument and loom over one of South Asia’s finest Mughal gardens. The […]
