The Middle East problem

When Saddam Hussein first invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the coalition of the willing was formed under a UN proclamation of war against him, Pakistan faced a similar predicament as it does today. Saudi Arabia thought it was next in line unless Saddam was stopped and then evicted from Kuwait. The Saudis asked the world to help. Happily, the Americans and the world responded in support of Saudi Arabia, except that after all was done the Americans billed $36 billion to the Saudis as the cost of the war.
That is when the price of oil went up over time to make space for such payments, and the kingdom, always known for its rich coffers, urged austerity at home. If resentment within the subjects against the royal family took root around this time, it showed itself in later years with the advent of the Arab Spring when both Bahrain, a Saudi cousin-state and eastern Saudi Arabia, home to the Saudi Shias, turned restive.
At the time Pakistan internally had another dilemma though. The then Pakistani government, under Nawaz Sharif, was in favour of sending troops to Saudi Arabia to join the war, while its army chief, Aslam Beg Mirza, stood firmly in the corner of Saddam Hussein. Even as the two divisions of his army proceeded to the south of Saudi Arabia, in a defensive mission, the army chief continued to churn out statements in support of Saddam Hussein and against the coalition of which his army was a purported partner. On the roads, goods trucks – popular for informal truck art, and always given to instant expression of popular sentiments – began displaying Aslam Beg Mirza and Saddam Hussein, both riding horses in a triumphant pose. There simply could not have been another state-society and state-state dichotomy as large and as explicit.
The current spate of turmoil in the Middle East also has Saudi Arabia in the middle. Removing Bashar al-Assad in Syria was a Saudi obsession that would have also weakened the Hezbollah in Lebanon, taking two of the most important allies of Iran out of the Middle East power equation. Instead, what began as Al Nusra, the Saudi proxy for the mission, soon gave way to Isis, a newer, inimical and a more destructive force for the Saudis to contend with.
The rise of Isis as a ruthless Sunni force, given to anti-Shia beliefs and all else that stands in its way to exclusive domination of the Muslim world, grants fresh relevance to Iran. As Iran entered the war to stem this danger against its own geopolitical and ideological interests the table of eminence that the Saudis sought as their foremost objective seems to have reversed. What goes on in the Middle East is classic geopolitical power play. Since it has Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two competing poles, it gets qualified as either an Iran-Saudi play for power or as a Shia-Sunni contest. In the end it is all about power and influence.
Yemen, too, is an interesting extension of similar political dynamics. After the Arab Spring gobbled up another long-serving autocrat in Ali Abdullah Saleh, space opened up for players such as the Al-Qaeda and the tribal Houthis in the north to exercise their influence. What has emerged there is another tussle for power when a weak government post-Arab Spring simply melted away to give the Houthi Shias space. The Al-Qaeda too may have gone as have the pursuing Americans – giving rise to apprehensions of the Houthi offensive being another American ploy of indirect strategy to close physical space on Al-Qaeda. The Saudi angst though stands significantly enhanced because of the implicit consequences.
The chaos in Yemen opens up space for what the Saudis clearly see as an inimical situation. The Houthis are purported to carry Iranian support, which means yet another region of increasing Iranian influence in the Middle East and a closing gauntlet around the Saudi regime. True or not, that is how it seems to the Saudi dynasty that perceives its hold over the kingdom becoming tentative under the shadow of a pervasive threat of an Arab Spring held at bay with some contrived social management and financial inducement of its vulnerable segments in the east. Geopolitics of the Iran-Saudi contention in the larger Middle East, coupled with such underlying apprehensions, lies at the root of the acute Saudi discomfort.
All of that places nations such as Pakistan – with stakes in maintaining relations with both Iran and Saudi Arabia – in a dilemma. Saudi Arabia has at times of difficulty come to Pakistan’s rescue, mostly with hefty bailouts; but then it also has been instrumental in leading Pakistan down the slippery slope of increasing religious extremism and turmoil while sponsoring its own ideological agenda. The recent past has seen Saudi role in helping spread Salafism in Pakistan. Pakistan has also huge imperatives and determinants that force its interests closer to home. Saudi Arabia may be an important brotherly nation but a friendly Iran is a geostrategic imperative for Pakistan. It is almost as if emotion and reason strain at each other.
Modern nation-states are run not by emotion but by reason and strategic interests. Pakistan’s other strategic imperative is its national and social cohesion. With a Shia population of at least 15 percent, Pakistan simply cannot be seen to be taking sides in a war that will increasingly be characterised as a Shia-Sunni confrontation.
That is unfortunately the implied consequence when Pakistan declares that it will defend the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia. Not only is it an overextension of its own limited politico-military capacity – and punching above its weight, again – in a Saudi-Iran confrontation that is taking sides at the cost of our own strategic interests and geopolitical imperatives.
There are other important issues too. What of the focus on the war against terrorism and extremism that had begun to gain centrality in our national effort to forge a new path as a nation? It has been of such crystallising importance that its success is now inalienably linked to the success of the idea of Pakistan. Such is the importance of the mission that our nation and its military have chosen to take upon themselves. To dilute its focus with foreign expeditions will defeat that very objective.
For too long now we have been rentier(s) to the world, placing our services at their disposal to achieve foreign ends without regard to the consequences of such engagements. We are fighting those consequences now, cleansing ourselves off the muck that has marred our face. This isn’t the moment to give the effort up for another ill-thought adventure. Nor is it the time to get some more muck on. Let foreign fires be. Discern the imperative from the important.
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal of the Pakistan Air Force and served as its deputy chief of staff.
Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com