The Londoner

Pakistan is a very beautiful country as it is a land of splendors and a great tourist destination. The landscape changes from high mountain ranges like the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindukush in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in the North to the Punjab plains and deserts onward to the Arabian Sea. There are a myriad mountain peaks in Pakistan, the tallest being K-2 which is the second-highest peak in the world (8,611 meters), after Mount Everest in Nepal. The 806-kilometer-long Karakoram highway constructed on the ancient route between Pakistan and China is the highest trade route in the world. Read the full story here . 

Located in the heart of Asia, Pakistan is the gateway to the financially liquid Gulf states and the economically advanced Far Eastern tigers. This strategic advantage alone makes Pakistan a marketplace teeming with possibilities. A large part of the workforce is proficient in English, hardworking and intelligent. Pakistan possesses a large pool of trained and experienced engineers, bankers, lawyers and other professionals, with many having substantial international experience, which is available on cost-effective terms. Current investment policies have been tailor-made to suit investor needs. Pakistan’s policy trends have been consistent, with liberalization, deregulation, privatization and facilitation being its cornerstones.  Read the full story here. 

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — The Taliban on Sunday threatened to attack Pakistani lawmakers and their families if they support allowing NATO to resume shipping supplies through the country to troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan closed its Afghan border crossings to NATO in November in retaliation for American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan’s parliament is scheduled to begin debate Monday on a revised relationship with the U.S. that could lead to the border being reopened . Read the full story here. 

Contrary to what we hear from Republicans, America did not lose its way in the past few years. It lost its way a generation ago when it abandoned its faith in government.   Conventional wisdom has it that come November the 2012 presidential election will be determined by the state of the economy. Actually, the real battle will be over a much older fundamental ideological issue in American politics: what role government should play in shaping our future. This special issue of The Nation  is dedicated to bringing the debate about government front and center as the presidential race heats up. Read the full story here. 

India  In casting its vote on Syria with the West and the Arab League at the United Nations Security Council, India may have lost a rare opportunity to impart solid political content to the Brazil-Russia-China-India-South Africa (BRICS) grouping, which has so far focussed on economic issues. Two key countries belonging to BRICS — China and Russia — vetoed the West-backed resolution, which did not explicitly call for the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, to quit. However, it implicitly did demand the President's departure as it backed the position adopted by the Arab League, which had earlier called for Mr. Assad's exit. In the Arab League's perception, the President needed to make way for Syria's Vice-President with a national unity government overseeing the political transition. Read the full story here. 

One of the early calls that Vladimir Putin took following his expected victory in the Russian presidential election last weekend was from Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. He congratulated Putin on his success and  invited  him to visit Islamabad in September which the Russian leader accepted, according to newspaper reports citing an official statement. It would be the first visit by a Russian head of state to Pakistan which stood on the other side of the Cold War, peaking in its emergence as the staging ground for the U.S. campaign  to defeat the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan.  Read the full story here.  

Pakistan is almost unrecognizable from the country I knew a decade ago. In the late 1990s, hotels and religious shrines like Lahore’s Mian Mir tomb weren’t fortified by concentric rings of security, and household chores didn’t need to be planned days in advance because of electricity and gas rationing. Market-baked bread for dinner could be bought for coins instead of notes, and scenic areas like the Swat Valley were still holiday destinations rather than militant hotbeds. Abroad, such security and economic woes are often ascribed to Pakistan’s challenging  geopolitical situation : militancy fanned by the  US -led war in Afghanistan, a ruinously expensive and self-damaging rivalry with India, an army tangled up in an embrace with radical jihadists seen as a buffer against external threats. But for many Pakistanis, four years after the end of Pervez Musharraf’s military government and the restoration of meaningful democracy, part of the blame also lies with a feckless civilian lea