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PAKISTAN will defend Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity, was the one declaration made public from the meeting of the country’s civilian and military leadership to ‘consider’ a Saudi request for material help to deal with the threat the kingdom sees developing in Yemen on its southern borders.
The rapid advances made by the coalition of the Shia Houthi militia and the forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh meant that in addition to Sana’a, it is also now in (at least) partial control of Aden. In marching on to Aden the coalition has clearly crossed what was considered a ‘red line’ by the Saudis.
Against this backdrop, the ambiguous Pakistani statement fuelled more concerns than it addressed at home and, if the social media was an accurate indicator, anxiety began to mount that the country was once again rather mindlessly jumping headlong into a foreign conflict.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s clarification was as clear as any could have been.
Adding to this anxiety was the assertion carried by many international media organisations, not least some Gulf-based channels among them, quoting Saudi sources, that Pakistan had committed forces (or was interested in doing so) to the rapidly escalating conflict.
Therefore, when Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stood up to make a statement in the National Assembly many eyes were on him. His clarification was as clear as any could have been. Khawaja Asif (reported in detail on the news pages in today’s paper) said there had been no decision to despatch troops to Saudi Arabia.
He did, however, reiterate the position of the country’s civil-military leadership that any threat to Saudi territorial integrity would not be tolerated. But he didn’t specify how far Pakistan would go to defend it.
With no imminent threat of any element involved in the Yemen strife advancing towards Saudi Arabia, the whole question of Pakistani participation becomes hypothetical. There are still worries. For example if there was an uprising in the kingdom’s eastern region where there is a sizeable Shia population, how would Pakistan react?
One hopes that the ‘coalition’ the Saudis have put together/are putting together will help check any ambition, if at all, that the Houthi-led forces may have harboured towards Saudi soil. The aerial firepower at the command of the Saudis would make any such exercise suicidal at best.
Whatever the case, Khawaja Asif was very perceptive in arguing that Pakistan would do nothing in the conflict that could further accentuate fault lines in Pakistan, in an obvious reference to the targeting of Shias by terrorists hostile to their ideology, that of the latter seen as aligned to the one propagated by the Saudis.
Despite the fact that our civil-military leaders’ track record in such areas, notwithstanding their public declarations, inspires little confidence, that Khawaja Asif was prepared to share the leadership’s thinking behind a decision seemed to be a first positive of its kind.
It has been suggested in these columns and with even greater vigour elsewhere by others that Islamabad is very well placed as Iran’s neighbour and one of Saudi Arabia’s closest allies to try and mediate in the disputes between the two rather than take sides in any conflict between the two.
The Saudis are understandably nervous with what they see as their encirclement by Shia Iran across the Gulf in the east and Iraq across the north-eastern border, coupled with the Houthis in the south. The Saudis’ quick and brutal response to assist the king in quelling pro-democracy protests by Bahrain’s Shia majority was indicative of what makes it edgy.
On the other hand, there are now real prospects that Iran’s long international isolation may end, with its negotiations with the US-led P5+1 on its nuclear programme in a decisive phase. This can’t be a source of any comfort to Riyadh.
Today’s geopolitical reality is so different from the time when first Saddam Husain’s, then US-controlled, Iraq on the one hand and the Taliban’s Afghanistan and a (barely) neutral Pakistan on the other were all breathing down Tehran’s neck and the Saudis were sitting pretty.
Over the years Iran has built and consolidated its influence in the region. What started as an ideological alliance with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Syrian Ba’athist Assad regime has now expanded to include a lead role in Iraq’s fightback with the self-styled Islamic State.
Once relatively unknown, General Qasem Suleimani, the leader of the Iranian Pasdaran-i-Inqilab’s (Revolutionary Guards) Quds Force, is now one of the most widely recognised faces of any general in the region due to his high-profile role in Syria and more notably in Iraq.
But whether his fame and successes are something Iran can build on to consolidate its influence in the region is another matter. The brutal, bloody conflict in Syria is nowhere near a conclusion whichever way you look at it.
Many an observer is warning that in the short-term the Iranian-backed Shia militias and elements of the Iraqi army may have had some successes against the IS but their offensive, with a halt in the US air campaign, now seems stalled and could potentially trigger more sectarian strife in Iraq.
The Saudis have long exported a toxic ideology which has caused so much havoc mostly in the Muslim world. Now Iran may have overstretched itself by openly backing the Houthis in Yemen and spooking the Saudis — so much so that there is talk of Saudi-Israel cooperation in a possible airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Any such eventuality will have horrible, bloody consequences and it is unlikely any country in the region will remain unaffected. Therefore, Pakistan should not wait for the largely impotent Arab League or other such fora but use its good offices to mediate between the two.
And if Islamabad reaches the conclusion it has no mediatory role to play in the conflict, then it should quietly stay away from it. Self-preservation demands that.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2015
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