Saudi Arabia looks East

SOME seven years ago, Pakistan, in a gesture of solidarity, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Saudi kingdom by the house of Saud. In the context of that commemoration, I wrote in this space that “in Saudi Arabia, the future is being carefully planned with Crown Prince Abdullah’s strength of vision providing a guarantee of both continuity and adaptation to a world of flux”.

One was aware of the winds of change but not exactly of the extraordinary compression of time and space brought about by the momentous events in the post-9/11 era. In retrospect, the kingdom was fortunate that the then crown prince and now the king was there to steer the ship of state safely through a very rough passage. He provided imaginative leadership to an enlightened group in the royal family that was sensitive to the need for adaptation and reform.

King Abdullah has just become the first Saudi monarch to visit China since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1990. He has also just paid the first visit by a Saudi king to India since 1955. Malaysia naturally falls into a separate category but easily the one characterized by a common quest, along with Pakistan, for a comprehensive response to the grave challenges posed to the Ummah by the cascading events of the last few years. When this piece appears in print, Pakistan would be rolling out the red carpet for the most beloved of its visitors.

On the eve of this tour, the Arab paper, Asharq Alawast asked a rhetorical question: does Riyadh intend “to alter the scope of its strategic relations, or is it about to embark upon a political adventure?” In Pakistan too, there was some unjustified, if understandable, uncertainty about the custodian of the two holy mosques agreeing to be the chief guest at India’s national day. The simple answer is that notwithstanding the deliberate projection of it as a troubled kingdom by the western media, Saudi Arabia is ready to assume a major role in regional and global affairs.

A year ago, analyst Michael Scott made the following comment in a Foreign Affairs article: “Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis. The economy cannot keep pace with the population growth, the welfare state is rapidly deteriorating and regional and sectarian resentments are rising to the fore. These problems have been exacerbated by an upsurge in radical Islamic activism.” In early November 2003, a residential compound was attacked by militants killing 17 and wounding another 122, and this assessment was obviously written under the shadow of that tragic event. The conventional wisdom in the West was that Saudi Arabia needed major reforms which would not be undertaken because of the “cultural schizophrenia” of its elite.

In fact, every aspect of Saudi life is undergoing reforms systematically, if gradually, on the lines King Abdullah has championed for decades. The results of the municipal elections testified to the freedom available to the electorate. Consistent with the trends in the entire Islamic world — Palestinian election being the latest — there was visible support for Islamic parties. The parliament (majlis al shura) is still a nominated body but its composition is fairly representative of the entire spectrum of Saudi population and its debates gets more substantive by the day. The stage is being set for greater democratization.

The management of the economy is more sophisticated than ever before, The kingdom has joined the WTO and it is able to absorb the stresses of a rather unstable world economic order. Its own GDP is growing at seven per cent per annum. The oil exports in 2005 soared to $160 billion. Riyadh is ready for major economic initiatives as demonstrated by the opening of the window to the east. This is a strategic opening, the implications of which should be studied carefully.

Consider China first, the country of the greatest economic promise in the next 20 years. A major plank of the current Chinese diplomacy aims at energy security, on which hinges the fulfilment of that promise. The Chinese are scouring the world for reliable sources of oil and gas and, in recent months, have carried a portfolio of competitive investment in energy assets abroad. Their bid to acquire the American Unocal was thwarted but they bought up a Canadian energy company in Kazakhstan. Even more striking is the arrangement they have now negotiated with the Indians.

Amongst the five agreements signed after King Abdullah’s meeting with President Hu Jintao, the real landmark was the accord on expanding cooperation in oil, natural gas and minerals. China, foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal pointed out, was one of the most important markets for oil and Saudi oil its most important source. In fact, it accounts for 26 per cent of Chinese oil imports which in 2005 added up to 130 million tons. The present agreement replaces the ad hoc purchases of Saudi oil by a comprehensive arrangement valid for years to come.

The East Wind (the pun on Chinese-made missiles in Saudi arsenal being coincidental) that has brought King Abdullah to these far off coasts has to be understood in Riyadh’s new policy framework. King Abdullah has worked tirelessly to extend the diplomatic horizon of the kingdom. Occasionally, it is referred to as the doctrine of taqqarub, signifying co-existence and cooperation with non-Muslims and, in the present context of growing polarization, a deep inter-faith dialogue. In its internal manifestation, it has helped promote a robust debate on democracy and better sectarian understanding.

It is widely recognized that King Abdullah played a key role in the national dialogue based on a document entitled “the National Reform Document”. Mindful of efforts to incite sectarian conflict in the Islamic world, as, indeed, of apprehensions that the eastern province of the kingdom and the Ismaili belt may be targets of these efforts especially after the invasion of Iraq, the crown prince of the time had shown great foresight. He is now addressing these concerns as the monarch.

The India initiative belongs to the new dimension of Saudi foreign and security policy. Not to be forgotten is the large Muslim population in India which, like the people of Pakistan, has historic religious ties with the kingdom. A new entente between Saudi Arabia and India can, therefore, work only to the advantage of both the states and the Indian Muslims; it can also contribute to a rapprochement between India and Pakistan.

India is problematic for the region largely because of its present contradictions. It has the ambition but not many attributes of a global power. Though in more recent years, it has increasingly relied on trade and investment for its international agenda, it still tends to project military power as the main instrument of its influence. Since the nuclear tests of 1998, its budgets have maintained a 15 to 25 per cent annual increase in military spending.

Apart from South Asia, the countries of the Gulf, Iran and the Central Asian states have to consider the ramifications of the build-up of the Indian air force, conventional and nuclear-capable missiles and the Goa-based naval assets. It is, therefore, natural for these states to reach a credible security understanding with New Delhi. The heavy Indian component in the population of the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia has 1.5 million Indian overseas contract workers) adds another dimension to their interaction with India.

Economic cooperation has played a pivotal role in Sino-Indian rapprochement. In the Saudi case, India’s growing energy deficit is a strong argument for closer relations. In a wide-ranging interview with a Saudi newspaper on the eve of the king’s visit, Manmohan Singh observed that “by taking full advantage of our complementarities and synergies, Saudi Arabia and India have the opportunity to create a strategic partnership in the field of energy, through joint projects and mutual investment in our respective countries”. The Indian prime minister spoke of “an immense untapped potential in our relationship”. There were additional agreements on bilateral investment promotion and avoidance of double taxation and a memorandum of cooperation on crime, especially transnational smuggling of narcotics. Apparently, the king has offered to finance the repair of the great mosque in Delhi and some educational facilities.

“Assuming a middle-of-the-range price of around $40 a barrel,” a survey made by The Economist notes “the oil bubbling out of the ground ( in Saudi Arabia) could continue to be worth $500 million a day for many years to come.” Coupled with the gains of a successful diversification of economy, the kingdom has great freedom of manoeuvre. Its diplomacy has to be alert to the dangers lurking in a region made highly volatile by the United States’ military policy in the wake of 9/11. The situation in Iraq is fraught with grave implications especially if the country undergoes a three-way split on ethnic and sectarian basis.

One can, as yet, only speculate about the unfolding of the crisis being created in the name of Iran’s nuclear programme. In the worst case scenario, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would face a most serious fallout of this crisis. The democratization project of President Bush, which most people in the region regard as no more than a camouflage for an entirely different agenda, will be tested again and again for its sincerity. The margin by which Hamas has won the Palestinian election will confront the White House with a particularly severe test of intentions.

Pakistan has to show a complete understanding of the new bearings of the Saudi foreign policy. If stronger Sino-Saudi ties evoke our spontaneous applause, we should also strive to turn enhanced Saudi-Indian cooperation to our advantage. The need of the hour is to deepen the dialogue with the kingdom with a view to harmonizing regional perceptions and policies.

It is also highly important to bring Iran and Turkey into the ambit of consultations. Malaysia always makes an outstanding contribution to the Muslim discourse. All our countries need to free themselves from the conceptual shackles brought by the tragedy of the twin towers. It is my hope to follow up this preliminary piece on Riyadh’s “Look East policy” with another article on King Abdullah’s eagerly awaited visit to Pakistan.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

Arms trade & human rights

CINEMA-GOERS in Britain will be shocked this week to see an advert selling them AK47 machine guns, alongside the ads for cars and soft drinks. It’s a spoof by Amnesty International, sending up TV shopping channels to draw attention to the appalling ease with which weapons are bought and sold around the world. But the reality is far more shocking.

As a human rights campaigner, I’ve visited countless countries where people suffer terrible abuses. Women raped at gunpoint during the conflict in the Balkans, police killings of street children in Brazil, the horrors committed during conflicts in central Africa. Behind so many of these atrocities is one common factor: the gun. Around the world, arms facilitate abuse. Torture, “disappearances”, rape, all take place at gunpoint. And behind that gun is the arms dealer, profiting from a trade that’s barely regulated and spiralling out of control.

States have a right to bear arms and to protect their citizens, so trade in arms is inevitable. But for such an enormous and lethal business there is a startling lack of controls to ensure that those weapons don’t go to people who will abuse them. One person dies every minute as a result of armed violence - half a million men, women and children every year. Conflict fuels poverty as vital resources are wasted on expensive military hardware; and at a local level terrified people are unable to go about their ordinary, working lives.

Yet some people are making big money from the spiralling violence. The global arms trade is enormous, with about $21bn of authorised exports every year. Most of the sales are from the richest and most powerful nations. From 1998 to 2001 the US, Britain and France earned more from arms sales to the developing world than they gave in aid.

So what is the answer? An international arms trade treaty would make it illegal to sell arms to countries where they could be used to abuse human rights or break international humanitarian law. It would be legally binding, replacing the existing “gentlemen’s agreements” that are conveniently forgotten when it is expedient to do so. And it would provide a set of common standards to stop gunrunners exploiting loopholes in national laws.

Such a treaty has been drafted by campaigners and already has the support of over 40 countries, including the UK, and the Defence Manufacturers Association, the voice of the British arms industry. They rightly recognise the need for a set of common standards to govern the global arms trade.

Of course, such a treaty would only stop the flow of arms into countries where they do such damage. It would not reduce the enormous number of arms that already exist: nearly 640m small arms. At the end of the contra war in Nicaragua, where I was born, thousands of weapons remained in the hands of “civilian” rebels and army personnel. While I was making a documentary on the demobilisation of the contras, weapons were everywhere. It’s difficult to convince people that to normalise an aggravated situation arms need to be destroyed on both sides. So we also need action to drain the existing pool of arms, and provide people with security so they do not need weapons for self-protection.

But there’s no point draining the pool of arms if we don’t stop unscrupulous dealers flooding conflict zones with more weapons. Governments must recognise that arms proliferation is one of the main drivers of human rights abuse and poverty, and take action. The UN is meeting in June to discuss the issue, but it will only act if put under pressure. The international community must acknowledge that the reality of armed violence is even more shocking than that pictured on our cinema screens.

—Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a human rights campaigner

After the Hamas earthquake

DEMOCRATS will rightly applaud the 78 per cent turnout in Wednesday’s elections to the Palestinian parliament, which were remarkably fair, free and peaceful. George Bush and Tony Blair, who set such store by promoting democracy in Iraq and (selectively) elsewhere in the Middle East, should be delighted.

The only problem is the result which shows a stunning victory for the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, long shunned as a terrorist organisation not only by Israel but also by the US, Europe and Russia. This is a catastrophic defeat for Fatah, the natural party of liberation and government for Palestinians for 40 years and for half that period committed to a two-state solution to this most intractable of conflicts.

Hamas is no ordinary political party. Until it participated in this election it was best known in Israel and abroad for the suicide attacks it used against its Israeli enemies. In Gaza and the West Bank it was admired for its network of social services and opposition to the corruption which became a byword for Fatah and the PLO, under Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas.

Ideologically, Hamas is close to where the PLO was 30 years ago, wedded to armed struggle and to the replacement of Israel by a Palestinian state. It was hardly a good sign when its leader in exile met recently with the Iranian president, who calls for the eradication of Israel.

Rhetoric and reality may, however, be different: Hamas’s election manifesto did not repeat the call of its charter for the destruction of the Jewish state. It has been disciplined enough to largely observe a year-long ceasefire and has hinted it may continue that indefinitely. Its electoral triumph probably owes less to its resistance to occupation - an unequal struggle against Israeli F16’s, Hellfire missiles and targeted assassinations - than to its demand for clean hands and delivery.

Paradoxically, a victory whose scale was unanticipated even by expert local pollsters, might - just - turn out to be better news that it looks. Had Hamas won just a few ministerial seats in a powersharing cabinet dominated by Fatah, the tension between politics and resistance could have been hard to resolve. If its parliamentary majority - 76 out of 132 seats, to Fatah’s 43 - is to mean total responsibility, the Kalashnikovs and explosive belts will have to go. It is hard to imagine Hamas running an effective government without dealing with Israelis. It is even harder to see the Israelis dealing with it except through the barrel of a gun if bombs start going off on buses in Tel Aviv.

That is why the right response to this result is to insist that Hamas make clear that it is committed to negotiations with Israel. The new parliament should pass and implement a draft political parties law requiring armed militias to disband. By the same token Israel must meet its obligations under the internationally backed “road map” for peace, including the cessation of all settlement activity.

Israel will be deeply sceptical both of Hamas’s intentions and outside advice and will be tempted to go for more unilateral moves on the model of the Gaza pullout pushed through by Ariel Sharon last summer. It will be hard to argue with Ehud Olmert, Mr Sharon’s successor, facing a testing election in March, when he says Israel has “no partner” for peace. Mr Olmert will only weaken his new centrist Kadima party if he is seen making any concessions to what the Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, has ominously but predictably dubbed “Hamasistan”.

Outsiders such as the EU and US should watch to see if conditional engagement will increase their leverage and encourage Hamas to take the gun and the bomb out of Palestinian politics.

— The Guardian, London

Irritating thorn of democracy

PAKISTAN has one leg shorter than the other; it leans on imports to keep itself upright. Nowhere is this more visible than in the continuing trade imbalance that yawns wider and wider each year. The prices of commodities that it has to import, such as oil and petroleum products, increase disproportionately to the value it receives for its exports.

If there has been any diversification, it has been in its sources of supply which now include India, from whom Pakistan had begun to import its tea with sugar.

The one commodity that is unlikely to find a place in the trade list of commodities that could be imported into Pakistan is Indian-style Democracy. Nowhere is that more apparent than at Wagah border, where democracy stops at the white line that divides India and Pakistan. The same kind of coolies carry goods on similarly bowed shoulders to the same border, and from it on the other side. The only difference is that one set of coolies has been exercising his vote in free and fair national elections, and the other is still hoping to do so.

What is it that can cause a democratic tradition to blossom on one side of the border, and yet fail to take root in identical soil a few feet away on the other side?

It is this very question that two eminent South Asians — Lord Meghnad Desai and Ch. Aitzaz Ahsan — sought to explain recently at a function organized in connection with their joint literary collaboration: Divided by Democracy. Lord Desai explained why India is a democracy and Aitzaz Ahsan responded as to why Pakistan is not.

Ironically, India’s success as the world’s largest democracy has brought it closer in Indian minds to the United States, where an invention developed in Greece was imported into the US and over the centuries given a local home-grown flavour. The parallels between the two democracies go even deeper. Lord Desai said that ‘democracy in India is more akin to American democracy in the era of robber barons and corrupt politicians, with its heady mixture of ethnic and immigrant groups, class cleavages as well as rural/urban and North/South divisions.’

And there he draws a line. Indian democracy is India-specific. “It is vigorous and very much ingrained in the native culture. A country with six hundred million electors has never been seen before. India, when all is said and done, is its own invention as far as its democracy is concerned.” Comparing the 2004 electoral experience in India and in the US during the recent elections that gave George W. Bush a second term and denied Atal Behari Vajpayee a further one, one can see the crucial flaw in the emergence of a two-legged, two party system. In the US presidential elections, which saw a 55.3 per cent voter turnout, George W. Bush garnered 51 per cent of the votes, and his opponent John Kerry 48 per cent. In India, the turnout was almost comparable — 56 per cent. Out of the 220 political parties contesting the 2004 elections, Congress captured 26 per cent of the popular vote and the BJP 22 per cent, with a difference of only seven seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. In effect, both in the US and in India, a near majority had to accept governance by a marginal majority.

It is not inconceivable therefore that what is a system of coalition by one successful major party governing with the support of smaller satellites may well be replaced in the foreseeable future by a coalition between the two major parties themselves. They could combine and represent both factions, rather than having to halve the electorate.

The problem against such a merger of interests is not ideological it has to do with personalities. Only once in history has there been a truly successful marriage of such interests — in medieval Spain, under the joint rule of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. (They are also famous for having sponsored Christopher Columbus on his voyage to the New World when he accidentally discovered America.) Since then, the argument has always been on who would become Napoleon and who Josephine.

In Pakistan, it has taken almost 60 years for the various parties with a vested interest in politics — the landed aristocracy created, as Aitzaz Ahsan argued, by the British through agricultural colonization, the industrial bourgeoisie and the military elite — to gradually metamorphose and identify with political parties. Today, the politicians, the corporate/industrial bourgeoisie and the military stand together, albeit at unequal height, with the president-cum-COAS pre-eminent among them.

During the past six years of Musharraf’s administration, he has moved away from the early corporate plan that Pakistan could be run as a body corporate with himself as its chief executive, assisted by a senior minister imported from an international bank, a cabinet of technocrats who would put their assets but not their ambitions in escrow, and a National Security Council hovering supreme to watch over the interests of the nation. The structure of national governance has now become more like a squat totem pole, in which only the head of the chief is visible.

As election year 2007 nears, many Pakistanis wonder whether they shall ever be able to have a meaningful say in the determination of what sort of government they can have, and if so by whom. As the year nears in which Pakistan will have to meet its obligations towards an external debt that is now almost $40 billion, every indebted Pakistani needs to know how that will be repaid, and if so, when and how.

Until now, Pakistanis have been led to believe that the natural order is prosperity before democracy. The Indians have taken the opposite route; they have secured democracy before grasping for economic well-being. Under its present stewardship and with the unanimity between the Congress and the BJP on the direction in which India’s economy should move, that seems a not unachievable target.

Those who have watched India’s growth can anticipate that sooner rather than later, the passenger buses oscillating across the border will give way to convoys of trucks and serpentine railway wagons moving with metronomic regularity between the two countries. The lobbies that today fear the collapse of Pakistan’s industry, commerce and culture may perhaps accept that it is possible to be pluralistic without being condescending towards one’s minorities, to be secular without losing one’s belief in the universality of Islam, and to be democratic without having to ask for it every four years.

One of the observations made by Lord Meghnad during his introduction of the book to an audience in Lahore was how more piquant it might have been had he written on Pakistan and Aitzaz Ahsan written on India. Might Lord Meghnad have been less forthright than another Indian had been about Pakistan’s democratic inexperience?

G. Parthasarathy (a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan), in his essay Diplomatic Divide that he jointly authored with Dr Humayun Khan (once Pakistan’s foreign secretary) commented that “nothing has been more debilitating to the emergence of a healthy and growing middle class in Pakistan than its feudal structure, superimposed on the illusions in the mind of its military elite about Pakistan’s endless strategic importance to the United States and to the western World.”

Aitzaz Ahsan who has more than a professional interest in democracy believes that “even military dictators are convinced that full suffrage elections are unavoidable and inevitable”, adding his conviction that one day democracy in Pakistan “must prevail to the fullest extent by wresting complete supremacy and sovereignty.” He has left it for others to explain how best to remove the irritating thorn of democracy embedded in the foot of Androcles’ lion.