The new strategic gossip around the block, and there’s plenty of it when it comes to Pakistan, is the reported offer of the port of Pasni to the US to build it up as a route to secure critical minerals. A report in The Financial Times does, however, say this idea is yet to be pitched officially to the White House, but is being discussed with businessmen, a route that Pakistan army chief Asim Munir has used successfully in getting US President Donald Trump’s attention.

All of this needs a little disaggregating to make sense of a deal that Pakistani officials are now trying to backtrack on, in an effort to appease China. As a war threatens on the Afghan border despite the current tenuous ceasefire, and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a far-right populist political party, rampages across major cities, Pakistan’s desperation for a little handholding is intense.

The apparent reason for offering the port and developing it at a reported cost of some $1.2 billion through federal and US-backed funds is for shipping out critical minerals. That deal, signed between US Strategic Metals (USSM) and Pakistan’s army-run Frontier Works Organization (FWO), is worth just $500 million, an amount that an earlier dictator, General Ziaul Haq, would have called peanuts, especially since it would entail Pakistan spending at least half of the total estimated costs of 3.8 billion Pakistani rupees.

It’s doubtful if Pakistan can afford to pay even half that figure. Nor presumably would a commercial enterprise want to pay up for something worth a quarter of that. But........

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