sachs317_ARIF ALIAFP via Getty Images_pakistanironfactorymine

How World Bank Arbitrators Mugged Pakistan

Nov 26, 2019 Jeffrey D. Sachs

Thanks to the World Bank’s flawed and corrupt investment arbitration process, the rich are making a fortune at the expense of poor countries. The latest shakedown is a $5.9 billion award against Pakistan’s government in favor of two global mining companies for an illegal project that was never approved or carried out.

NEW YORK – Wall Street hedge funds and lawyers have turned an arcane procedure of international treaties into a money machine, at the cost of the world’s poorest people. The latest shakedown is a $5.9 billion award against Pakistan’s government in favor of two global mining companies – Antofagasta PLC of Chile and Barrick Gold Corporation of Canada – for a project that was never approved by Pakistan and never carried out.

Here are the facts.

In 1993, a US-incorporated mining company, BHP, entered into a joint venture (JV) with the Balochistan Development Authority (BDA), a public corporation in Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province. The JV was set up to prospect for gold and copper, and in the event of favorable discoveries, to seek a mining license. BHP was not optimistic about the project’s profitability and dragged its feet on exploration. In the early 2000s, it assigned the prospecting rights to an Australian company, which created Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) for the project.

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Already have an account? Log in

Support High-Quality Commentary

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world's foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads and book reviews, Say More contributor interviews, The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Writing for PS since 1995
323 Commentaries

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, and most recently, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 20 in all 20 Comments on this article

Asaad Areeb Dec 7, 2019

On one side, Pakistan has acquired IMF $6 Billion extended loan facility with strict conditions and on other such WB policies or so called arbitration has crippled its economic balance-sheet if such amount is payed by Pakistan. Fundamentally, Breton Woods twins ensure vested interests of rich and only manipulate poor countries like Pakistan. I would like writer to publish his views on DAWN Newspaper/any Pakistan media, so people know such issues. Thanks
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
j. von Hettlingen Nov 29, 2019

Jeffrey Sachs lashes out at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) for deciding against Pakistan “in favor of two global mining companies – Antofagasta PLC of Chile and Barrick Gold Corporation of Canada – for a project that was never approved by Pakistan and never carried out.” While he says Pakistan has been bullied into paying damages of $5.8 billion to the suitor, the two companies are not the litigants, Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) is.
The author accuses Wall Street hedge funds and lawyers of having “turned an arcane procedure of international treaties into a money machine.” He says, thanks to the ICSID’s “flawed and corrupt investment arbitration process, the rich are making a fortune at the expense of poor countries.” With a GDP/per capita of $1,497 (nominal; 2019) Pakistan is a poor country, but it has a rich military.
The public has to understand what the litigation is all about. TCC is a joint venture between Antofagasta and Barrick Gold. It discovered vast mineral wealth more than a decade ago in Reko Diq mine in the restive province of Balochistan, a remote area of southwestern Pakistan, near its border with Iran and Afghanistan. The mine is said to be holding one the world’s richest untapped deposits of copper and gold. Pakistan’s powerful military sees the Reko Diq mine as a strategic national asset and had taken a key role in its development amid the dispute, according Reuters.
TCC said it had invested more than $220 million to develop mineral deposits at Reko Diq by the time Pakistan’s government, in 2011, unexpectedly refused to grant the company the mining lease to continue its operations. Pakistan’s Supreme Court terminated the deal in 2013, and TCC sought $11.43 billion in damages. The litigation went on for years, and in 2017, the ICSID ruled against Pakistan. But only in July this year had it determined the damages owed to TCC.
Being ordered to pay a $4.08 billion penalty and $1.87 billion in interest, Pakistan has said it will appeal the case in accordance with ICSID’s investment arbitration procedures, which could take two to three years. TCC is said to be still “willing to strike a deal with Pakistan,” but added that “it would continue protecting its commercial and legal interests until the dispute was over.” The government in Islamabad said it welcomed the company’s willingness for a negotiated settlement – a mutually beneficial solution.
The ruling came at a sensitive time for Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose government has been grappling with an economic crisis and was forced to seek a bailout from the IMF, resulting in a $6 billion agreement to stave off a looming balance of payments crisis. Pakistan has partnered with Beijing in the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project, part of China’s vast Belt and Road initiative, but it remains in desperate need of foreign investment.
Critics say the Reko Diq mine case reveals Pakistan’s woes with foreign investors, and has become a test case for Imran Khan’s ability to attract serious foreign investment to the country. The legal battle with TCC has cost millions.
According to the author, “the arbitration ruling is utterly capricious,” and the ICSID “is not an honest broker.” He calls for a “reversal” of the “outrageous” ruling against Pakistan and a “thorough investigation” of the “flawed and corrupt process,” fixing this “broken” arbitration system.
Yet the author fails to mention that in the past, Pakistan has been involved in at least 13 other high-stake disputes with foreign investors, where many more millions have been spent in legal costs or compensation.
These costs are of course in addition to losing these existing investments by entering into disputes with investors, and the loss of the country’s image as an investor-friendly destination. In addition, disputes taken by foreign investors to ICSID are difficult to manage by governments where tribunals, are focused on resolving the dispute, and payment of compensation etc, and not on maintaining working relationships between the disputing parties.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019

The World Bank mugging is icing on the cake. Here's the meat of the problem for Pakistan. Some quotes from real skirmishes in Iran and Iraq, that echo all through Pakistan and through Bangladesh.
...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-protests/iraqi-forces-kill-45-protesters-after-iranian-consulate-torched-idUSKBN1Y20WX
...
"Video of protesters cheering in the night as flames billowed from the consulate were a stunning image after years in which Tehran’s influence among Shi’ite Muslims in Arab states has been a defining factor in Middle East politics."
...
"The protesters, overwhelmingly Shi’ite, accused the Iraqi authorities of turning against their own people to defend Iran."
....
"Another protester, Ali, described the attack on the consulate as “a brave act and a reaction from the Iraqi people. We don’t want the Iranians”."
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019

RE: your-"Here are the facts."

Well, those are SOME of the facts, BUT not all of the facts.

To get a bit more of a balanced picture, here are some more facts???, depending if you consider the text factual or not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Pakistan

Wall Street is quite corrupt BUT, not as corrupt as the historical corruption that Pakistan has been using as a system of operations for its form of government, if you want to call it a government. Pakistani leaders function by, secret payoffs, really more of a patronage system, the majority of workers are supported by abject and the worst kind of enslavement of people for generations. There aren't even any labor costs published on OECD website for national labor costs, as there are published labor costs for a good number of other countries. Although, if you really notice, there's hardly anything of anything about Islamic labor income, or costs reported anywhere.

That system that Pakistan is presently using is the form of government that Pakistan has adopted after the British left. The Pakistani leadership set it up, not the British. IF, the Pakistani's would have continued to implement some of the infrastructure that was actually left and still functioning way back around 1948 or so, they might have a bit more of a reasonable economy to support some sort of safety protocols for the Shipbreak Industry that could actually be an inroad even today to counteract the extremely bad patronage corruption system. In fact, if no one has noticed, the entire world is adopting the same patronage system as the only support viable economic vehicle on the present framework of theft-based software application publishing platforms that is presently establishing empires, that really promote the extreme imperialistic, and closed, secret operational systems of ancient societies way before the modern Common Era of humankind.

This is not Capitalism. This process is not democracy. This process is not Imperialism.
This process is Corruption of any and all other ethical forms of processing anything including and most of all financial transactional processing, either on the internet, between computers, or between human beings, hand-to-hand, and even in real life.

Happy Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Consider yourself enlightened, as I am.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019

Hegemony:
hegemony
n.
The predominance of one state or social group over others.
n.
Predominance; preponderance; leadership; specifically, headship or control exercised by one state over another or others, as through confederation or conquest: originally applied to such a relation often existing among the states of ancient Greece.
n.
Leadership; preponderant influence or authority; -- usually applied to the relation of a government or state to its neighbors or confederates.

My read of the word "Hegemony", and my take-away:

The US has not had hegemonic power for how long now in the real world on the planet earth?

Hegemony is an illusion.

Hegemony is a word used to describe the illusionary sense of power that is projected by one human being over another. Hegemony is a word used to describe the reflections of the theoretical interactions of the dynamics that are the consequences and results of what other words, such as war, combat, and many other imply in action, and in the specific projections of force. Hegemony is a word used to then most often be applied for interpretation of the roles of activities and actions of the state/nation, or any state/nation.

Hegemony describes the action rooted in absolute reactive response mechanized from, initially within the human being, as emotion as uncontrollable, nonsenseless behavior that can consume all in the externalized projections as power projected from the individual self reflected in the totality of the artificial state, as the then externalized self.

The US dollar is a financial media that is used globally because it is convenient, and so far it has had, and has been, just about the only sort of at times, LEGAL accountable physical form for ANY financial media to be printed and to be used in the hands of the most people around the globe. It has been the absolute EASIEST of any of the financial media to be used, especially by some big game players on the ground especially, lately, in the Middle East.

The US dollar is used by anybody and everybody. It is a tool of convenience. That is all. It is a common denominator for exchange between the most people on the planet earth presently in 2019. That can and will change. How do you want that change to occur? That is what everyone needs to consider, and use some common sense with the tools at hand.

AI is only a tool. Computers are tools.

AI is a new language to be used by many to good.

AI is a language, a tool for communication, for education.

AI is a language, not to be MIS applied, as a tool for control of any one.

AI can continue to be used by a few for further bad action.

Use some good common sense.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019

The title to this article is interesting. The finger of blame is being pointed to an institution. Then the finger of blame moves from the institution, to direct the victim as one specific nation or state. That's really not the real story at all.

Today, Nov. 28, 2019 on South China Post, there is a news article with a quote from Prof. Sachs:

"In addition, the US has undermined the political standing of the dollar’s role by using it to impose sanctions on countries such as Iran, suspending their access to the US dollar-based international financial messaging network, Sachs said."
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3039793/chinas-yuan-10-ye

Did he really say that sentence in public? Or did the author at the SCP, interpret and then summarize his basic message. There could be some distortion by the interpretation of the author of the news article in the SCP, and maybe not.

Really, it is not "the US that has done any undermining of the political standing of the dollar's role anywhere". The US as a nation, all of the "regular citizens" (as some people label all the rest of the citizens who are not one specific person, playing a specific role in public view) enmass/people have not really had a solitary move to impose any sanctions on Iran. Only one man is really digging in. If Sachs doesn't realize that fact, then he is a very willing supporter and unwitting contributor to the illegal projects and quite a few other involvements that he may want to present to create a better performance, especially for himself.

Sachs just hit a real home run for Iran, who is up next for Pakistan?

Does it really make any difference who is playing a frontman for whom? It sure does.

Why?

Because when verbal references are used, by leaders in public messages, that allow discrete inferences to be made by the public during public messaging by leaders, and influencers, the inferences can very easily lead to real combat at ground levels.

Perhaps the real intent is to create a real justification for some reactive mass actions, or political actions from some zones both within and outside of US land to really create justification of cause for real escalated use of force against masses of populations.

Who in the world is he speaking for? Whose passport does he show at any customs gate? Now, maybe he is in the group that escapes any scrutiny, maybe he doesn't even have to pass through any port of legal entry and exit, so he is exempted for any action he does, even if it includes a lousy performance in public, like who?

Sachs, are you sure you know what you are doing out there in public?
https://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ffd3/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/07/DESA-Briefing-Note-Addis-Action-Agenda.pdf
- Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019
  
  The first link isn't a good link, so I am reposting it:
  https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3039793/chinas-yuan-10-years-ending-us-dollar-hegemony-says-jeffrey
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Paul Friesen Nov 28, 2019

I would like to know what teeth this arbitration panel has. What will be the consequences if Pakistan refuses to pay?
- P. Kamath Nov 28, 2019
  
  Perhaps Chinese might pay, for they have promised some years ago that Pakistan that it would be turned into an Asian Ecoomic Tiger. Of course with few strings. Left to itself, Pakistanis won’t be able to pay anything. Politicians have stashed their money abroad, only five percent of tax payers pay taxes. The story is long. It is a mess.😊.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Paul Friesen Nov 28, 2019

Usually, I am reasonably proud to be a Canadian, but not when stuff like this is done and excused by my government. I will, at least, forward this article to my member of parliament. Not very effective, probably, but what else is there to do?
- P. Kamath Nov 28, 2019
  
  Paul Friesen: Canada is a great country - great democracy, liberal, high institutions of justice , law and order, education, health care, good hockey, and beyond all very few scandals and blessed peace. But it is a small potatoe in international arena. So leave it alone.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- Elizabeth Pula Nov 28, 2019
  
  Hi-
  Prof. Sachs has included a really good link of the full legal case on the hyperlink in the $5.9 billion award.
  You may want to check out some of the other links, and here's one. Probably won't help in solving any immediate dilemma,
  Just don't panic about any of it. There's a lot of dimensions to the whole story.
  There's a few bankers that are taking their own lives. Although, I really wonder if they are or somebody else is. Some of the money trail is really playing out like Reality TV.
  Just don't jump to conclusions. The verticals in the plot-line have a broad horizontal pulse.
  
  https://internationalman.com/articles/democracy-is-the-ideal-distraction/
  The article, not the ads, on that link, add an interesting perspective to this whole story.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
vivek iyer Nov 27, 2019

I am sorry to say that this post reeks of White Racism against people with Brown Skin. Furthermore, it seeks to undermine the sovereignty of the Government of Pakistan- an Islamic Republic- by pretending that
1) Pakistani people are 'world's poorest' and thus uneducated and easily manipulated. This is a Racist point of view. Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, a Pakistani Citizen, was an acclaimed jurist who served as a Judge of the International Court of Justice. He presided over that Bench from 1970 to 1973. As President Obama pointed out, Pakistan has had excellent Jurists, Diplomats and Economists right from its very inception in 1947. Sachs may belong to a different religion and this may cause him to view adherents of Islam to be less rational. I hope this is not the case. I urge Prof. Sachs not to give grounds for such suspicion by writing in a reprehensible manner about the sovereign Republic of Pakistan.
2) Pakistan is under the thumb of a wholly impotent organization which Sachs knows very well, named the 'World Bank'. The truth is a lot of Pakistanis worked and still work for that organization and, moreover, it is quite useless because, as Eugene Lim pointed out, 'Civil Society activists' in places like Pakistan can make a lot of money preventing infrastructure or mining projects going ahead for some spurious 'human rights' reason.

What has actually happened here? Did some Whiteys in Washington do down the Brown Man in Pakistan? No! Pakistanis are on Wall Street and K Street. They are one of the most affluent and educated communities in America. The Pakistani elite don't just have Oxbridge accents, they have Ivy League credentials. Obama knew this very well. Sachs does too. Yet he is writing this Racist nonsense here where a lot of Pakistani people who know this case much better than he does will read it. Sachs is making himself utterly ridiculous.

Now let us look at the truth as to what has happened. The Pakistani Supreme Court turned populist after defying Gen. Musharraff. Now it has simply gone off the deep end. The World Bank and Wall Street and Hedge Fund bosses have nothing to do with what has happened. This particular agreement was with Australia. What will be the outcome? A compromise. Pakistan won't be fleeced- that is the sort of empty rhetoric we would expect from crazy anti-semitic nutjobs in Pakistan. Why is Sachs channeling Zaid Hamid? Does he really not know that this type of fake news is aimed squarely at Jewish people? That is the conspiracy theory behind these shenanigans. Why is Sachs 'virtue signalling' firstly by endorsing a Racist view of Pakistan and then by repeating anti-semitic slander and conspiracy theory? Is he a 'useful idiot' or useless simply?

ICSID is as useless as the World Bank or Sachs or anyone else it once employed or was advised by. A broker has to be smart. Honesty is irrelevant. Sachs has his own well known animus against sensible people who think poor people are rational and don't need the interessement of credentialized virtue signalling cretins.

Arbitration proceedings are not important. 'Flawed and corrupt processes' aren't either. The fact of the matter is Balochistan is not a peaceful place. Reko Diq could be economic if things were peaceful and infrastructure of the sort envisaged could materialize in a secure manner. The can has been kicked down the road- but at least the can is still in play. No thanks can go to the likes of Sachs for this outcome.
- Elizabeth Pula Nov 27, 2019
  
  Hello Vivek:
  
  I am suggesting to you to read my comment. I am not ordering you to. I am not commanding you to. I will suggest that you don't jump to any conclusions, either at this point.
  
  My comment is totally focused and appropriate for further individual erudition based on the subject matter of the article: "How World Bank Arbitrators Mugged Pakistan", as written by Jeffrey D. Sachs, and as posted by Project Syndicate, on the publishing platform, by telecommunication processing, using proprietary, and privately-owned software applications, on November 26, 2019.
  
  Hello Prof. Sachs,
  
  Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye I am writing this comment for a reason.
  The following link, that is way down after all the "x's", is not what you think it is.
  
  What you are presently reading about is:
  
  The new, latest and greatest GOOGLE TERMS OF SERVICE AGREEMENT coming to you on December 10, 2019.
  
  That GOOGLE terms of service agreement has a whole lot of essential information to understand what has occurred in Pakistan. Is it a horribly one-sided, only in favor of GOOGLE and some other unnamed entities, not even a servicing contract, terms of service agreement?
  
  This link is not a service contract. This link is not a service agreement, either.
  
  This link is an UN-contract, mis-presented to the reader/viewer, who is expected, anticipated, and guaranteed by cooperative action to unwittingly agree to giving way, way, way too much personal data access to be undermined ONLY to BENEFIT someone else.
  
  This is a one-sided data mining UN-CONTRACT.
  
  This link is what should be called getting used, over and over and over and over and over again. Do I need to repeat that sentence?
  
  Can you think of any other word that might be appropriate to describe the experience?
  
  XXX XXX XXX
  https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210
  
  I have excerpted two lines from the permission slip that the viewer, reader is allowing, participating, and agreeing to be continuously raped. It just depends how long, that joint participatory event should continue, as a standard operating activity in the international, onshore and off-shore MNE worlds, online, off-line, on paper, and off paper.
  
  I have written those sentences for a reason.
  
  Here are two sentences from the new December 10, 2019 YOUTUBE agreement for your benefit to read again, hopefully.
  
  The words are excerpted from the hyperlink that I have already given you.
  
  “License. We’ve clarified the content license you grant us to make it easier to understand. We’re not asking for additional permissions and there’s no difference in how we’re using your content.
  
  Duration. We have removed the right for YouTube to use your comments in perpetuity.”
  
  In the UN-contract,what GOOGLE is really saying is that the viewer has exactly one right left in the world.
  
  Google is telling you that:
  
  while GOOGLE has given you EXACTLY ONE RIGHT
  
  which is: not to use everything else that GOOGLE- and any other telecommunication network, system, or device, especially, any privately owned 5G corporate entity- can grab from any comment, any personal interaction, either by hand action, eye action, gesture from any camera action that is perceivable by any product that can ever be produced by anyone in perpetuity.
  
  That my dear reader is what is really called a REAL TAKE AWAY in the real world of every day business in the real world on the planet earth.
  
  It doesn’t make any difference if you are living in the US, or Pakistan. It does not make any difference what color your skin is either.
  - Elizabeth Pula Nov 27, 2019
    
    There are certain practices that individual owners across the globe do for themselves.
    
    There are certain practices that workers across the globe need to learn to do for themselves.
    Here's a quote to consider to consider about the context of action VS non-action, the law VS corrupting laws.
    
    "The law offers little protection, he says. “EU laws stop EU-flagged ships being broken up on Asian beaches, but because owners can easily ‘reflag’ ships it has little strength.”"
    
    For better context reference, here's a link:
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/dec/02/chittagong-shipbreaking-yards-legal-fight
    To get an even clearer picture, and to add some more context reference:
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/dec/02/chittagong-shipbreaking-yards-legal-fight
    To add some balance to the context:
    https://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/223546-1296680097256/Shipbreaking.pdf
    
    To give some background information, as to the reason that I used the quote at the top of my comment:
    The DeVos multi-million/billion watercraft owners use the exact some practice of not using an American flag, to flag the watercraft while docked in the US internal waterways. I wonder how that affects wages of the workers on those watercraft. I wonder how that affects the US tax revenues, as there is no proper trackable, licensing, IRS recordable documentation requirement, nor of course any collections of any subsequents licensing for the state, where the watercraft is docked when it is docked, and probably also contributing to consequential pollution of the local waterways in the US.
    Just thought to add that last, long prepositional phrase as a minor detail, considering the greater implications of the whole soupy, clog mess that we are all floating around in, and on.
    A new reply to this comment has been posted.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Nov 26, 2019

Sure looked like somebody knew what they were doing to writeup that international legal settlement. It's pretty complex, and quite informative.

My take-away synopsis:
Looks like the private public project really may go as far back as the 1970’s. The BMCR info on the internet just display a "404-page not found message". The Pakistani’s did not accomplish any work over 50 years. The American’s and Canadian’s didn’t too much either. Some exploratory work, a few core drill samples done. When Pakistani political leadership changed, the BMCR got thrown out, and looks like the contracts started to be in some documented form, if there were any documented agreements of any prior date.

In 2019, to make a long-story short, the Pakistanis wanted the Americans, British, and Canadians etal. out, and wanted the Russians, and Chinese in. They either never paid the first mining group, or at least no funds exchanged after 2011. They all made out like bandits over that 50 year span, for doing essentially nothing. See how much monies really exchange hands between the Chinese, Russians and Pakistanis over the next 50 years. Looks like around $600,million may have got distributed and redistributed through the ICSID. The international attorneys, and expert witnesses, for both claimant and respondent sure got a lot of payouts this year. Is attorney Sachs a close relative? Looks like he got over a million.

There may be a new contract pending for the Chinese for possibly 4-Billion, see if it gets let. See if any information is available on the internet about the contractual agreement, and costs, and payouts, over the next 4 years or so. See if any real mining project really gets developed, seeing as there may not be enough water access for any real mining operations, ever, even if there is a real gold cache there.

Seeing, as Pakistan never even allowed any land rights, water rights, nor any real activities to the Mining Group, it will be interesting how much the Chinese and Russians accomplish over the next 50 years. Really seems to be more of a vanity project, or a cover for fund flows, legal, or illegal, especially due to infighting between Sunni and Shiite, a gang warfare split that has been an ongoing battle zone since the death of Muhammad in the 600’sCE. Pakistan is pretty much the line drawn in the sand that divides the two polarities. The struggle is constant.

https://www.pakistanfront.pk/reko-diq-mines-why-chejva-is-illegal-ceased-by-sc-of-pakistan/

That’s a pic of what that mine project looks like in 2019, after approximately 50 years.

Back in the 80’s, when I flew into a Mine development Project in the US. I got to fly in on a nice private little aircraft. I was the only passenger on that little aircraft. It was fun. There was nothing there other than the bare land, and a gravel road. In less than 2 years, that mine was operational and ore was being processed. 120-ton trucks freighted in, power lines in, power grid up and running, housing built. We even used computers. It was kind of like a military operational field assignment that got results. Project Management teams can accomplish some real action with real results. Project Software, Surveys, Assessment studies can also be a total waste of everybody’s time. That was when Reagan was president. The mine was shut-down in about 2 more years. It was a pretty good, and pretty big project.

I can emphathize with the Pakistani’s but that’s about it. If they couldn’t accomplish something real with or without outside help, doesn’t say much about anybody’s work effort on that project. I wonder if that article and photo stay accessible on the internet to be viewed by the general public.

See how much Pakistan’s leadership like the Chinese and Russians. Depends on who gets the take-aways, I guess.

Paras. 1487, and 1488 are pretty intriguing in your court case hyperlink, so is modern DCF method analysis of the price projections, and of course the final accounting of the payouts.

Thank you for the opportunity to express my opinion, I appreciate it. It was a great read.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Not Important Nov 26, 2019

As a Pakistani immigrant to the US, this makes my blood boil and then you people wonder why they hate us? This is exactly why they hate you, because you rob from one of the poorest countries who are struggling to rise up. Pakistan should start charging NATO and the Western countries $5 Billion a year for access to Afghanistan, come up with fees, penalties and high interest rates if not paid just like this. Pakistan keeps giving whatever it has but keeps getting a black eye in the Western press. Enough...!!! Stop it now. 70,000 Pakistanis died in the US War on terror in Afghanistan, for no fault of its own, just terrible neighbors to the West and East.
- Elizabeth Pula Nov 27, 2019
  
  What you are writing is quite important, Not Important.
  
  Read some of the problems with the taxation and distribution that this link reveals:
  
  https://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/223546-1296680097256/Shipbreaking.pdf
  
  There are a lot of problems for the Pakistani workers.
  There are a lot of problems for the Bangladesh workers.
  
  You may have some specific insight and perspective to especially contribute for some other people to take action to correct some of the problems. It does take time.
  
  Miracles do not happen overnite, unfortunately for all of us, at different times.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- vivek iyer Nov 27, 2019
  
  Pakistan was solely at fault for supporting Taliban and Al Qaeeda. Osama was sheltering in Abbotabad. The Army is solely responsible for Pakistan's misfortunes. Bangladesh has overtaken Pakistan in per capita GDP. Why? It is not ruled by megalomaniacs.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Abdul-Wahab Raaj Nov 26, 2019

A world of double standards. On one hand, they will respect and accept the supreme court's ruling if a death sentence were passed on their enemies like Mullah so and so or Osama bin So. On the other, they will reject or ignore the same court's ruling against transactions that were purely fraudulent and endangers Pakistan's welfare? I hope Pakistan will appeal. As a matter of fact, your conclusion is even a better alternative. That illegal ruling by self (or peer)-appointed arbitrators must be totally disregarded.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.