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30 April 2015

Saying no to a friend

April 30, 2015

The implications of the Pakistani refusal to help Saudi Arabia in Yemen should not be underestimated. If China is Islamabad’s “all-weather friend”, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Sultan once said that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have “one of the closest relationships in the world between any two countries”. And Wikileaks revealed that in 2007, the Saudi ambassador to the US had boasted that his authorities were not “observers in Pakistan, we are participants”.

The recent rebuff, therefore, came as a shock to Riyadh. Certainly, this decision is the result of a series of circumstances. First, the Pakistani army is conducting a military operation in North Waziristan. To open another front would have been a dangerous distraction. Second, taking Saudi Arabia’s side could have alienated Iran at a time when Islamabad wants to engage Tehran in talks about a post-Nato Afghanistan. 

But the Iran factor needs to be seen in a larger context. Islamabad has signed an agreement with it on building a gas pipeline that Pakistan badly needs. While Iran has moved on building its segment, Pakistan has not yet started because of external — Western and Saudi — pressures. Iran also matters because of sectarian tensions that have acquired a transnational dimension. The Jundallah, a Sunni militant group, has been launching attacks on Sistan-Baluchistan from Quetta, where it allegedly has a safe haven. This had resulted in tensions between Tehran and Islamabad, till Pakistan arrested Jundallah leaders in March. 

It would also have meant that Pakistan sided with Sunni militants, who are part of the terrorist nebula that the army is, at last, targeting after the Peshawar tragedy — a sign of a paradigmatic shift. Indeed, Pakistan distancing itself from Saudi Arabia seems to be the external face of this shift.But sectarianism has also become one of the major domestic, existential challenges that Pakistan is facing. Since the 1990s, about 5,000 people have been killed in violence between Shias and Sunnis. If Islamabad had sided with Saudi Arabia, Iran would have been encouraged to support the Shias of Pakistan to relaunch the proxy war that Tehran and Riyadh have been fighting in Pakistan since the late 1970s. 

Why is Pakistan’s new attitude so significant? First, Islamabad has always stood by Saudi Arabia militarily. Most recently, when the Sunni dynasty of Bahrain, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, was under attack because of an Arab Spring-like mobilisation supported by the Shia-majority populace, Pakistan obliged Riyadh by sending troops. 

Second, PM Nawaz Sharif has always been close to Riyadh. When …continued »

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