Pakistan seems to have caught the geopolitical winds just right. Last month, Pakistan signed a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. Under this bold pact, an attack on one will be regarded as an attack on both, a dramatic escalation of security guarantees in a region already crowded with rivalries. At the same time, Islamabad has quietly dispatched rare earth mineral samples to the United States and is exploring deeper export agreements. Washington, for its part, appears newly interested in treating Pakistan as more than a peripheral irritant.
These moves suggest momentum. Commentators in Islamabad and Riyadh call it a renaissance of Pakistani foreign policy, a belated recognition of the country’s strategic indispensability. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s presence at the Gaza peace summit only reinforced the impression of a nation returning to centre stage in the Muslim world.
But this is no overnight miracle. It is the product of necessity, pressure and shifting alignments in a volatile region. Behind the optics lie harder realities.
The first driver of Pakistan’s foreign policy push is the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Washington’s abrupt exit left a vacuum it still struggles to fill. With a hostile Iran and an entrenched Taliban, the US needs a counterweight in the region. Pakistan, with its geography, intelligence networks and long entanglement in Afghan affairs, suddenly matters again.
US President Donald Trump’s demand that the Taliban hand over the Bagram airbase, five years after signing the deal that paved the way for the US withdrawal, underscores America’s search for leverage. If that gambit fails, Pakistan becomes the obvious fallback: the only state with both logistical capacity and political connections to help Washington maintain a presence in the region.
The second factor is the uneasy US-India relationship. Over the past decade, Washington has drawn New Delhi deeper into its Indo-Pacific strategy, strengthening its global profile in ways Pakistan sees as threatening. Yet US-India friction has grown. Disputes over visas and tariffs have festered. India’s embrace of Moscow has raised eyebrows in Washington.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August visit to Beijing sent a clear signal that India is willing to hedge its bets with China. Economically, his “Make in India” programme, modelled on East Asia’s low-cost export strategies, could undercut US manufacturing. For Trump, eager to maintain balance in Asia, Pakistan appears useful again as a counterweight to India’s flirtations with Beijing.
The third and most precarious driver is mineral diplomacy. Islamabad’s outreach to Washington centres on promises of access to rare earth minerals, many of which are located in the restive region of Balochistan. On paper, this looks like a win-win: Pakistan gains investment, and the US secures critical resources. But the reality is darker. Balochistan remains Pakistan’s poorest province despite decades of extraction. Infrastructure projects stand underused, airports lie empty and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
The Balochistan Mines and Minerals Act 2025, passed by the provincial legislature in March, has only deepened discontent. Under the act, Islamabad is formally empowered to recommend mining policies and licensing decisions in Balochistan, a move that has provoked opposition across the political spectrum. Critics argue it undermines provincial autonomy and recentralises control in Islamabad. Even right-wing religious parties, such as the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), seldom aligned with nationalist groups, have expressed opposition, portraying the law as yet another attempt to dispossess local communities of their rightful stake in the province’s resources.
This backlash underscores a dangerous trend. Resource exploitation without local participation fuels resentment and insurgency. By opening mineral wealth to foreign investors without social safeguards, Islamabad risks deepening the alienation of a province already scarred by conflict and militarisation. What looks like salvation in Islamabad can look like dispossession in Quetta.
Taken together, these drivers show that Pakistan’s foreign policy shift is less a renaissance than a calculated pivot under pressure. The Afghan vacuum, the recalibration of US-India ties and the lure of mineral diplomacy all explain Islamabad’s newfound prominence. But none erases underlying fragilities. Washington may once again treat Pakistan as disposable when its priorities change. India’s weight in US strategy is not going away. And Balochistan’s grievances will only deepen if resource deals remain extractive and exclusionary.
The applause in Riyadh, the visibility at the Gaza summit and the polite handshakes in Washington should not be mistaken for a strategic rebirth. Pakistan is manoeuvring carefully, improvising under pressure and seeking to turn vulnerabilities into opportunities. But the real test lies at home. Unless Islamabad can confront governance failures, regional inequalities and political mistrust, foreign policy gains will remain fragile.
In the end, no defence pact or minerals deal can substitute for a stable social contract within Pakistan itself. That is the true renaissance Pakistan still awaits.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The sun had just begun its descent when the Mane Street Band took the stage for their weekly Honky Tonk Sunday set at Pioneertown’s Red Dog Saloon. Young adults in hiking gear sipped beers beneath chandeliers shaped like wagon wheels as old timers with gray ponytails and cowboy hats chatted with a tattooed bartender. Outside, a group of parents sat around long picnic tables, ignoring their kids who were messing around in the dirt.
It wasn’t easy to tell who was local and who was just visiting the high desert town founded nearly 80 years ago as a permanent movie set for western films. The warm, neighborly scene felt like further proof of what locals had been telling me all weekend: The fake western town that Hollywood built has finally morphed into an actual western town with an identity of its own.
The Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and is a gathering place for locals and visitors alike.
(Simone Lueck / For Time Times)
“This is not Knott’s Berry Farm,” said JoAnne Gosen, a local shopkeeper and goat farmer who moved to the area 21 years ago. “This is a real town and it’s our town.”
After years of upheaval that included skyrocketing home prices, a pandemic-fueled Airbnb boom, a failed proposal for a multi-use event space and a false claim by a reality TV star that she singlehandedly owned the town, residents of this small unincorporated community say Pioneertown is settling into a new equilibrium. The tumultuous era at the town’s landmark roadhouse and concert venue Pappy and Harriet’s appears to have ended as new management repairs relations with the surrounding community. Established businesses like the Red Dog Saloon and the Pioneertown Motel are offering stable employment to locals and transplants alike and more buildings on Pioneertown’s western-themed “Mane St.” are being converted to small, locally run shops.
Locals dance at the Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown.
(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Pioneer Bowl in Pioneertown, California.(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Visitors will also find there’s much more to do than wait two hours for a table at Pappy and Harriet’s. Weekend tourists can grab a taco at the Red Dog Saloon, browse locally made natural bath products at Xeba Botanica, bowl in a historic bowling alley or explore the Berber-meets-cowboy store Soukie Modern. If you’re there on a Sunday morning, you can even pick up a dozen hand-boiled New York-style bagels if you order ahead.
“It can be difficult for us old-timers to see all the changes,” said Gosen, who spins goat fiber into yarn outside her soap shop on Mane Street most weekends. “I don’t love all the Airbnbs and the residents who can’t afford housing. But at the same time, we’re here on the farm by ourselves most of the week and on the weekend we’re fortunate enough to go into town and meet the most amazing people from all over the world.”
Hey bales are scattered on the main street in Pioneertown, cheekily known as “Mane Street.”
(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Developers, beware of the ‘Curtis Curse’
Pioneertown has always been a strange, hybrid place: half fake, half real.
The community was founded in the mid-1940s by a consortium of entertainers that included Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers, a popular singing group at the time that lent the town their name. It was conceived and led in its early years by Dick Curtis, a 6-foot-3 actor who appeared in more than 230 movies and television shows in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Curtis dreamed of creating a permanent western movie set against the rugged backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains that would also function as a working town with businesses that catered to film crews and residents. The Pioneertown Corp. broke ground in 1946. Among its first buildings were a land office, a beauty parlor, a motel, two restaurants and a feed store — all with Old West facades.
Filming in town mostly stopped in the 1950s, but the area continues to offer visitors and residents a unique mix of fantasy and function decades later. Some buildings like the General Store, the Saddlery and the Post Office house businesses. Others, like the jail, the livery and a barber shop are just facades — great for selfies but little else.
Over the years, people with big dreams and limited understanding of the challenges of building in this particular stretch of desert have tried and failed to bring major developments to the town, which today has about 600 residents. In the ‘60s, a car salesman from Ohio bought the Pioneertown Corp. and proposed plans to create a massive desert resort with townhomes, apartments, lakes and golf courses. He predicted it would eventually draw a population of 35,000. (The business went bankrupt instead.) During the pandemic, a mountain guide and supervising producer for Red Bull Media scared locals with a plan to convert 350 acres into an event space with residences, a recording studio, and an amphitheater that would hold up to 3,000 people. The project was eventually downgraded to a pricey Airbnb and by the time it was completed, he was no longer part of it.
The Film Museum in Pioneertown offers a curated look at the movies and films shot on the Hollywood set turned Western town.
(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Curt Sautter, who helps curate Pioneertown’s small film history museum, believes the town has been protected from major development by what he calls the Curtis Curse. “You can be successful in Pioneertown, but if you get greedy or you try to do something that messes with the environment or the community itself you will fail,” he said.
Locals know that growth in Pioneertown is inevitable, but they also point to its limitations: the meager local water supply, the lack of a fire department and that there is only one road into and out of town.
“The community wants slow growth that preserves the western character of the town and is compatible with the desert environment,” said Ben Loescher, an architect and president of Friends of Pioneertown, a nonprofit that supports the community.
Richard Lee of 29 Loaves sells freshly baked bagels outside the Pioneertown Motel on Sunday mornings.
(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
What to do in Pioneertown: Bowling, bagels, bingo and more
Today you’ll find signs of measured growth everywhere you look in Pioneertown, making now a great time to visit. Pioneer Bowl, a perfectly preserved 1946 vintage bowling alley with the original murals by a Hollywood set designer on its walls, has just resurfaced its lanes and extended its hours. It’s now open from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. A game will cost you $25 and is first come, first served. It used to be impossible to find breakfast in town, but now you’ll find breakfast burritos, tacos and quesadillas at the Red Dog Saloon, which opens everyday at 10 a.m. On Sundays from 8:30 am to 9:30 a.m., Richard Lee of 29 Loavesdelivers his fresh baked bagels to those who ordered them in advance outside the Pioneertown Motel. (The cinnamon-date bagels are especially recommended).
Locals at the Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown, California.(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Kids and selfie seekers will enjoy the Pioneertown Petting Zoo where $10 will buy you 20 minutes with chickens, turkeys and a small horse. There is also a little history museum to explore and two old western reenactment groups — Mane Street Stampede and Gunfighters for Hire — who seem to be entertaining themselves as much as they are the audience. (Check their websites for up to date show times.) If you plan ahead, you can also book a hike with goats with Yogi Goats Farm for $95 a person.
Visitors might also consider subscribing to the Pioneertown Gazette, a free weekly newsletter that Pioneertown Motel co-owner Matt French began publishing online in 2023. In it he compiles listings for dozens of concerts, performances, yoga classes and other events happening across the high desert. A personal favorite is Desert Bingo at the Red Dog Saloon 6:30 p.m. on Monday nights, where locals, visitors and transplants gather for a good-natured, foul-mouthed bingo game with a live DJ. One bingo board will cost you $10 and the proceeds benefit a local charity.
Pioneer Bowl in Pioneertown was built in 1946 to entertain film crews. It has recently expanded its hours.
(Simone Lueck / For The Times)
Whether you’re planning to visit for an afternoon or considering moving to the area, you’ll find that this Hollywood movie set, turned ghost town, turned tourist curiosity, turned actual western town offers more to entertain locals and visitors than it has in decades, without sacrificing the western vibe that drew its founders to the area nearly 80 years ago.
“It’s the landscape, and that weird western mythology,” said Loescher. “It’s always been full of individuals who are a little iconoclastic and don’t do things the normal way.”
And no matter how many people come along who dream of changing Pioneertown, the challenging desert environment — and the Curtis Curse — will likely keep it that way.
The city, in the Tuscany region of Italy, is perfect for a relaxing trip during autumn.
The beautiful city is often overlooked(Image: emicristea via Getty Images)
If you want to keep experiencing the sunshine of summer, planning a warm getaway can be just the ticket to lift your spirits.
We’re fortunate enough to be only a short flight away from numerous European destinations that maintain their warmth well into autumn and even winter, providing ample opportunities for sun-soaked escapes without straying too far from home.
And if you’re keen to avoid the crowds while still enjoying a relaxing few days of sightseeing, wine tasting, and cultural immersion, then one “hidden gem” Italian city should be on your radar.
Lauded as Italy’s lesser-known fairy tale city by Conde Nast Traveller, Lucca, nestled in the Tuscany region not far from Florence, is truly enchanting.
Merely glancing at photos of this fortified city transports you to an entirely different realm, with a wealth of attractions to captivate visitors of all ages, reports the Express.
While this quaint city in central Italy may not enjoy the same fame as Rome or Lake Como, its lack of congestion makes it an ideal spot for a leisurely break steeped in culture.
Its fairy tale-like charm is accentuated by the imposing Renaissance-era walls encircling the city.
Lucca is situated along the Serchio river in Italy’s Tuscany region(Image: Getty)
Once a bustling centre for silk production during medieval times, Lucca has managed to preserve its historical allure while adding a contemporary twist.
Despite the city’s growth and modernisation, the walls that once encased the old town have been preserved.
Lucca is home to an impressive collection of stunning Pisan-Romanesque churches, adorned in marbled hues, which never fail to captivate tourists.
Even in October, the weather remains pleasant, reaching up to 21C – not too hot, perfect for sightseeing, shopping and dining.
One of the best ways to explore the city is by bike, as many of the lanes are too narrow for cars. Numerous companies offer bike hire, including Cici Rai near Porta San Gervasio, the San Gervasio Gate.
For architecture enthusiasts, Lucca is ideal; spend time admiring the striking façade of the Cattedrale di San Martino and its large Crucifixion scene inside.
Be sure to climb up the Torre Guinigi for the best views of the city(Image: Getty)
The best views of Lucca are from above, so it’s worth climbing the Torre Guinigi – the city’s last remaining tower-house – for the most breathtaking panoramic vistas.
From the top of this 45-metre-high tower, you can admire rural landscapes and spot the outline of Lucca’s Roman amphitheatre, perfectly framed by medieval townhouses.
And naturally, the cuisine in Lucca is to die for. As per To Tuscany, local delicacies include a unique sweet tart of spinach and chard with pine nuts and, inspired by neighbouring Garfagnana, chestnut flour ravioli.
Sweet lovers will be eager to try some buccellato, a sweet bread made with raisins and aniseed that harks back to Roman times.
And if you’re fond of a glass of wine, some Lucchesi varieties range from the robust red Montecarlo di Lucca to the subtle white Colline Lucchesi.
Art Fein, a Los Angeles music-scene renaissance man who worked as a journalist, publicist, manager and television host over a six-decade career, has died. He was 79.
Fein died of heart failure on July 30 while recovering from surgery for a broken hip, according to Cliff Burnstein, co-founder of Q Prime Management and a longtime friend.
Arthur David Fein was born June 17, 1946. Growing up in Chicago, he was transfixed by a Chuck Berry concert at age 10 and devoted his life to discovering, championing and preserving rock music. After moving to Los Angeles in 1971 to pursue a career in music journalism, he got a job in Capitol Records’ then-nascent college promotion department. There, he befriended John Lennon and Yoko Ono, while coordinating interviews with college radio stations for Ono’s latest album, “Approximately Infinite Universe.”
After leaving Capitol, he wrote music reviews for the Los Angeles Times, Herald-Examiner, Billboard and others before being hired as music editor at Variety. “By the time I got this job, I was sick of the new, aggravating profession of rock criticism,” he recalled in his 2022 memoir “Rock’s in My Head.” “It was about writers, not the music. I wasn’t interested in being terribly critical. I was an advocate. I wanted to help the music along; rock critics wanted to help their sense of superiority.”
He returned to the label world with stints at Elektra/Asylum and Casblanca but pivoted to management, incubating a proto-punk scene that would yield influential L.A. acts like the Cramps, the Blasters and the Heaters. A compilation he assembled, 1983’s “(Art Fein Presents) The Best of L.A. Rockabilly,” became a bible for bands inspired by X and Social Distortion, which drew from vintage rockabilly but amped it up for the punk age.
His public access cable TV show, “Lil Art’s Poker Party,” featured interviews and performances with his favorite musicians and ran in SoCal for 24 years. Rhino Records co-founder Richard Foos recalled that “for years we had a weekly poker game either at his house or mine. I was there the night [music critic] Lester Bangs was playing. We started the first hand, started talking music, and never played another hand.”
In 1990, Fein published “The L.A. Musical History Tour: A Guide to the Rock and Roll Landmarks of Los Angeles,” a compendium of locations guiding readers to grave sites of stars such as Roy Orbison and Ritchie Valens, and sites where Sam Cooke, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Tim Hardin, Dennis Wilson and Darby Crash died.
Fein also developed a complicated relationship with producer Phil Spector, to whom Lennon had introduced Fein as the man who “knows all about music.” Fein became part of Spector’s inner circle, even into his deeply troubled years when he was convicted of murdering House of Blues hostess Lana Clarkson. Fein maintained contact with Spector even after he was sentenced to life in prison.
The Blasters’ lead guitarist Dave Alvin wrote on Facebook that “Back in the early days of The Blasters, when few outside of Rollin’ Rock Records knew or cared who we were, Art cared deeply. In early 1980, I was a wannabe poet working as a fry cook in Long Beach … Art Fein played ‘Marie Marie’ to a Welsh rock ‘n’ roll singer named Shakin’ Stevens, who quickly recorded my song and made it into a huge international hit. … Thanks to Art Fein, I was soon able to quit my job as a cook and pursue music. I can never, ever thank you enough for all you did for me, Art.”
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Rosie Flores added that “back in ‘94 when I was touring with Butch Hancock in Europe, I took a bad fall, at the end of our month-long tour. I slipped in the rain on a cobblestone street in London and severely broke my wrist. Three months later I was invited to sing at the Elvis [annual birthday] bash at The House of Blues … It was normal protocol to donate all the money from the proceeds of the show and give it to an organization or a charity. This year, Art surprised me and handed me a stack of money to the tune of $1,500 for my medical bills. I didn’t expect that at all [and] it brought tears to my eyes.”
In the closing lines of his memoir, Fein wrote that “I can’t say anything terribly pithy or canny about the state of record sales, or streaming, or new delivery systems. Or how YouTube or TikTok are shaping contemporary music.”
“It turns out I didn’t want to be in the music business; I wanted to be in the music,” he wrote. “There I remain.”
Fein is survived by daughter Jessie and wife Jennifer.
