Editorial Periscope | February 2020 Our issue this month takes a look back at last year's events, which almost brought two nuclear nations to outright...

Editor Global Village Space peeps into the complex kaleidoscope of Pakistani politics where Imran Khan’s government, increasingly troubled after Khosa’s “silver bullet”, appears to be fighting on multiple fronts without any clear signs of success – except one: foreign policy.

When two decades ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton characterized Kashmir as the "most dangerous place on earth" he may not have realized how prescient his words would remain – 21 years later, Kashmir continues to stoke fires between two nuclear-armed nations.

GVS's Editor Strategic Affairs analyses how the Indian strategic community has been debating how to establish a "New Norm" in South Asia. The Balakot raid, after a manufactured Pulwama wound, was a serious attempt in that direction; it failed because of a new assertive government in Islamabad, but more will follow.

The next showdown between India and Pakistan it seems will come between February 16 to 21 during the FATF plenary meetings in Paris, France. Speculation is rife in Pakistani media that the country will come out of the FATF grey list since key western members of FATF (US, UK, Germany and France) have shown satisfaction on Pakistan’s compliance on most of the critical concerns

The author, a retired Air Commodore, analyses the fallout of the Indian S-400 induction on Pakistan. When operationally deployed to defend along with the French Rafale, he argues, aerial raids by the PAF on Indian targets by human-crewed aircraft would become very challenging and costly.

An institutional political economist, who has previously worked at the IMF, argues that Pakistan’s economic policy for the next decade should have a balanced approach and focus on human wellbeing and not just GDP growth.

Pakistani papers often pick, choose and exploit from international reports as per their political agendas. It was not much different from the recent reports of Transparency International and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

CPEC has entered its second phase with Special Economic Zones going ahead to capitalize upon China’s policy of Industrial Relocation. Will this be an opportunity for Pakistan to create jobs, skills, exports and generate indigenous wealth; will this help a government that desperately needs mega-projects to show results through Public-Private Partnerships like FIEDMC? GVS examines!

The Special Economic Zones (SEZ) are the backbone of CPEC. In the second phase of CPEC, SEZs will be built across the country to facilitate industrialization and large-scale manufacturing.

The successful ground-breaking of the Allama Iqbal Industrial City (AIIC), Pakistan’s first CPEC linked Special Economic Zone (SEZ), in the first week of January 2010, brought to the forefront the role of the semi-autonomous, public-listed company, Faisalabad Industrial & Estate Development Management Company (FIEDMC) that has emerged as the role model of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in Pakistan.

The recent initiatives of skill development programs – like Hunarmand Jawan – through NAVTCC and launch of technical training programs by FIEDMC in collaboration with TEVTA are thus much-needed elements of strategy to benefit from this policy of industrial relocation and SEZs.