Pakistan, Jan. 27 -- Pakistan's mineral wealth has become the latest national daydream: a much-talked-about blueprint for escape from debt and the humiliation of recurring stabilisation programmes as officials and business elites routinely put a headline number on it ($6 trillion in untapped resources).

The country has spent the last year marketing that potential with new energy. Pakistan's Minerals Investment Forum in Islamabad was designed to signal seriousness to global capital, with the kind of guest list that governments like to cite as validation.

Reko Diq, in particular, is now presented as proof that the age of stalled megaprojects is over: Barrick has described the deposit in terms consistent with a world-scale copper-gold asse...