Untapped wealth of NAs, Published in The Frontier Post dated February 28, 1999 By Syed Shams ud Din Pakistan occupies a highly important place in the geo-strategic parlance and which has assumed still greater significance with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union in the early ‘90s and this becomes more relevant in the case of Northern Areas where Pakistan borders India, China, and Afghanistan while the nascent Central Asian States (CARs) lie only at a hand-shake away on the north-western fringes. It is however, noteworthy that the Tsarist Russia and Victorian England remained locked over the vast expanse   of the Central Asia steppes and the relentless struggle spanning most part of the nineteenth century, came to be known as the ‘Great Game’. Many nations have been gravitating in regional groupings so far, to deliberate upon economic issues to resolve them through a mutually advantageous interaction in the context of trade and commerce. Pakistan is endowed with a