A new alliance

Mohammed bin Salman revealed on Monday a military alliance of Muslim countries, which included Pakistan

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of the 34-nation military alliance against terrorism that has been announced by Saudi Arabia. At least in Pakistan, there was some surprise in bureaucratic and diplomatic circles to find that we were included in the alliance and government officials said that they only found out about it from media reports. The alliance was announced at an unusual news conference in Riyadh, where Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman revealed a military alliance of Muslim countries, which included Pakistan. The purpose was to coordinate efforts against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. Not included in the alliance are Iran, Syria and Iraq. For such a large enterprise, there was remarkably little detail, both as to how it came into being and how it would operate, though the minister said that there is to be a joint operations centre in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations. The minister said the alliance would operate against all terrorist groups no matter what their sectarian adherence, and that the Islamic State (IS) was not the only target.

Historically, Pakistan has only contributed militarily to operations under a UN mandate, and our forces have served long and honourably as UN peacekeepers the world over. This will have informed the decision — we believe the right decision — not to become militarily engaged in the conflict in Yemen, which with hindsight is ever-clearer to have been correct. Terrorism is constantly evolving, and the threat presented by the IS is both imminent in Pakistan and starkly evident elsewhere across the Middle East, the Fertile Crescent and the Maghrib.

A collective response from the Muslim world to that threat is to be welcomed, though the difficulties of putting such an alliance together, given the fractured nature of relations between those states, both included and excluded in alliance-building are very considerable. Pakistan is in the process of re-swinging its foreign policy compass and cannot afford a difficulty with Iran with which a reformed relationship is under construction. We reserve our unequivocal support for this development pending greater detail as to protocols and modalities.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2015.

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