All foreign aid, be it from friendly nations like China or international financial institutions like the IMF, comes at a cost. That could be in the form of high interest rates or demands of policy changes. The question now is what price Pakistan will be asked to pay for the $6 billion bailout the country has received from Saudi Arabia. Prime Minister Imran Khan gave a hint of the possible terms in an address to the nation on Wednesday where he said Pakistan would act as a mediator in the war in Yemen. If Pakistan’s role is to be simply that of a peacemaker between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels then it would be unobjectionable. The unspoken fear is that we may end up getting militarily involved in the war – something Saudi Arabia has long urged but which the PTI was at the forefront of rejecting in parliament during the PML-N’s tenure. Now suspicions have been raised by the prime minister’s sudden statement regarding Yemen. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry too failed to clarify things much when he said that a Yemeni opposition leader had invited Pakistan’s mediation. As much as we might need money from any possible source, nothing would justify Pakistan getting embroiled in a war that would jeopardise our already troubled relationship with Iran.
Pakistan’s governments have had a problem with transparency and clarity on most matters. The current government too seems to suffer from the same malaise. In its short tenure, party leaders are seen as sometimes offering wildly differing and different opinions and policies. So it is a bit difficult to know whose word can be trusted. The tone has been set by the PM himself, who is still needlessly defensive. The most recent case of confusion arose when the government denied that the prime minister had given an interview in which he said Pakistan is “desperate” for aid – even though the interview was recorded by respected foreign correspondents.
Imran has often claimed that the government has not yet decided if it will go to the IMF even as senior ministers were saying the decision had been made. In his speech on Wednesday too there was a sense that the PM does not realise the scale of the problem. He returned to his favourite topic of corruption and how eliminating that will solve Pakistan’s problems even though our economic issues are related to low exports and economic growth that cannot keep up with growing debt. This is why so many questions are being raised about the Saudi aid and whether we will now have to yoke ourselves to the kingdom, particularly in the ruinous Yemen war.