The moral confusion on Yemen

Battles we fight at home are crucial to our future & we cannot afford the ‘luxury’ of going off to fight...

Wars in the 21^st century need to have owners, nation states that are their sponsors but not necessarily boots-on-the-ground combatants, and that have the capacity to take on board other players — proxies. The war that is escalating in Yemen is part of the long struggle for regional power between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In crude terms, the Iranians are backing the Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia the elected government of Yemen, whose president fled his country and arrived in Saudi Arabia in the last week. The two sides are separated along sectarian lines.

Saudi Arabia has for decades been a very close regional ally of Pakistan. It has come to our aid in times of need with both money and oil, and now appears to be calling in the debt and seeking the assistance of Pakistan in its actions against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This places Pakistan in a difficult position that is fraught with real and present dangers. In supporting Saudi Arabia, Pakistan will be sending a message to Iran as well as further igniting already simmering sectarian tensions within the country. Our support can only exacerbate those tensions. Pakistan shares a border with Iran, which may — eventually — be a key player in our energy sector if we buy Iranian gas, the risk of American sanctions notwithstanding. Iran is unlikely to be supportive of any move we may make to support Saudi Arabia.

In purely military terms, questions have to be answered with respect to our capacity to resource the Saudi Arabia operation with troops. Thus far in Yemen, there have been no foreign ‘boots on the ground’ and all of the action by the Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries has been in the form of aerial bombardment and intelligence gathering and sharing. However, as the Americans have found in Iraq and Syria, air strikes do not a victory make and the Islamic State remains undefeated. The Houthi rebels have the military initiative and if they were to take the southern port of Aden, would in effect have gained control of the entire country administratively.

The Pakistan military is already engaged in hard fighting against militants in the northwest of the country and cannot afford to relax its vigilance to the east in case India, for whatever reason, decides to exploit a momentary inattention. Our air force is also heavily engaged with the internal conflict and there is no ‘slack’ in the system that would allow for meaningful foreign deployments. That said, it may be possible to utilise our aerial surveillance capacity in support of Saudi Arabia without a significant degradation of our home defences. The battles we fight at home are crucial to our future as a developing nation, and we cannot afford the ‘luxury’ of going off to fight another’s war, particularly when the cost is likely to be more than just blood and treasure.

Thus far, the government is “considering” the Saudi request for assistance and support, and our response has been verbal and non-committal in terms of what Pakistan may or may not commit. Pakistan cannot afford to alienate a close ally, and there are thousands of Pakistani migrant workers in Yemen that we have a commitment to support. In this regard, the prime minister’s efforts to evacuate Pakistanis stranded in Yemen by sending two PIA planes are welcome.

It is the policies of successive governments towards Saudi Arabia that have created the dependence that today leaves us in a classic bind, damned if we do and damned if we do not. If we are to support Saudi Arabia, it must be explicit that this will not involve troops on the ground and will be limited to working the diplomatic back channels with all those involved; because to a greater or lesser degree Pakistan has a relationship with every state currently engaged in the Yemen conflict — a minefield we must not enter.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2015.

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