A divided Muslim world

As Israel’s involvement in the Gaza Strip becomes more complicated by the day and as the television’s coverage of the damage the Israeli attack has done to the area and the overall suffering it has caused gets viewed in the Muslim world, the question is being asked whether the countries where the majority of the population follows the Islamic faith would also get pulled into the conflict. This would be of concern for Pakistan which has, after Indonesia, the second largest Muslim population in the world. How the policymakers in Pakistan and the citizenry react to the ongoing Israeli assault? I will answer this question in two parts. One, how Israel was involved in creating the Hamas as a counterforce to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO? Every day brings in news that must hurt those who are sympathetic to the cause that Hamas is pursuing. As I write this, there is news that Israeli agents assassinated Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, who was living in Beirut. He was second-in-command of Hamas’s political office. He was the guest of Hasan Nasrullah, the head of Hezbollah, a militant group that has the support of Iran and is a part of what Tehran calls the “axis of resistance.”

To those who view the Muslim world from the outside and fear its impact on the Christian West see it as an undivided geopolitical entity. How the countries with large Muslim populations have reacted to the operation being conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip have shown little unity of purpose. There remain enormous differences among the countries of the Muslim world. Given those differences, would some of them get involved directly or indirectly in helping the suffering Palestinians who have already lost more than 22,000 people to Israeli assaults? Iran, through the various groups it has aided to establish, is getting engaged with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen that are already actively involved in the conflict against Israel and the United States. Would Pakistan, with the world’s second largest Muslim population after Indonesia, also get pulled in? I will answer this question in two parts. One, it is not well-known that Israel played a role in building up Hamas as a counterforce to the secular PLO. Two, what is the likelihood of the widening of the conflict to include other Muslim countries.

Neil MacFarquhar, writing for The New York Times, underscored the critical role Israel has played in developing the political structure in the areas dominated by the Palestinians. He pointed out in his review of the role Israel has played to develop the political structure in the Muslim world the Jewish state borders. Hamas, the militant group against which Israel has gone to total war, after the militants found their way into the Jewish state in an operation executed on October 7, 2023, has its roots in Egypt. It traces its origins to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood which was born in 1928 as a religious and social reform movement but has been blamed by the authorities in Egypt for fomenting jihadist violence. The Organisation was believed to be behind the assassination of Anwar Sadaat, the Egyptian president, who was working hard to modernise his country and improve its position in the world. It was also actively involved in the political upheaval associated with the “Arab Spring” of 2011.

“Israel once allowed the group to grow as an Islamist counterweight to the more mainstream and secular Palestine Liberation Organization,” writes MacFarquhar. According to this account, Israel is now shedding a lot of Gazan blood to destroy the organisation it played a role increasing its importance in an effort to reduce the power of the PLO. The PLO was then headed by the legendry Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat who negotiated the so called “Oslo Accords” with the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinate by a young Jewish extremist. “In one of the first, notorious efforts to dismantle Hamas in 1992, it deported 415 of its leaders and allies, dumping them in a buffer zone along the Israeli-Lebanon border. Over the months before their return, they built an alliance with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-backed militia in the region,” wrote MacFarquhar. Scholars who specialise in the Middle East and the Arab world are highly skeptical that the all the killing that has resulted in the post-October 7 Israeli operation would bring the results Israel and the United States are seeking.

Pakistan has the largest military force in the Muslim world. It focused on developing its military prowess to protect itself from India. The Hindu leadership of that country never reconciled to the British decision to spit the colony they had governed for two hundred years into a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan. From the time Pakistan became independent, the Indians tried to undo the partition. To protect itself from these assaults, Pakistan invested heavily in developing its military, putting hundreds of thousands of people in uniform and giving them modern weapons. When India tested an atom bomb, Pakistan followed suit. It went on to develop a credible nuclear arsenal.

With large number of people in uniform equipped with domestically produced modern weapons, Pakistan help was sought on occasions by the world Muslim community. This happened at least three times and involved Pakistan’s help to the UAE, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It sent air force pilots to the UAE to train its people to use modern fighter pilots. It sent a brigade under the command of then Brigadier Zia-ul Haq to manage the flow of Palestinians from the West Bank of the Jordan River to Jordan. In one of my dozen or so meetings with President Zia-ul Haq, I asked him about the nature of Pakistan’s involvement in Jordan. His response was clear: he didn’t want to discuss what he and the brigade he commanded did in Jordan. For several years, Pakistan stationed a full division in Saudi Arabia to protect the religious sites in the Kingdom from possible attacks from some of the dissident forces.

Is there a role for Pakistan in the Middle East as the situation in that region comes under pressure from the actions being taken by Israelis? In the article in this space next week, I will take up the question of how the developing situation in the region could possibly involve other countries of the Muslim world, including Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2024.

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