Pakistan to the rescue — again

After the 1990 Gulf War, Pakistan has once again pledged to defend territorial integrity & sovereignty of Saudi Arabia

As a young captain, I was part of the first Pakistani infantry battalion that flew out to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to participate in the Gulf War. Stationed at Khamis Mushait, we never made it to the Iraqi battlefront as the political and military elite at home kept sending mixed messages to our Saudi hosts of why we should or should not be fighting their war. For us, the implication of General (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg’s pro-Iraqi statements at home was simple — our hosts gave us the marching orders to march in precisely the opposite direction — not towards Saudi Arabia’s border with Iraq but towards the Saudi-Yemen border.



For the next six months, we bore the desert heat, the raging sand storms and killed many desert flies, but all this time there was no military activity on the Saudi-Yemen border and it remained as quiet as the desert nights. Another brigade-size force of our army was stationed near the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border at Tabuk. It was also kept away from the battlefront and saw no military action. On January 11, 1991, sitting on the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border, I wrote a few lines in my diary that aptly summarised the frustrations of a military contingent that became victim of its government’s failed foreign policy:

Hopes, rumours and the prevalent uncertainty; wastage of time, rusted minds and injured vanity

Is it a desert storm or a storm laden with insanity? What strength, which guts, what is this talk of ability?

Mere outstretched hands waiting for charity; why ask someone to tell you your purpose of being here?

Do you find the pride in those eyes… that soldierly glare? Yes, it is gone yet another brick has fallen from the wall

Where is the peace of mind, a heart that was peaceful and calm? Why this heart now regrets coming to this place?

Where nothing much we have done but counted the days; why were it non-believers and not Muslims instead?

Who fought this war and were not they mere soldiers of butter and bread; what is this talk of reasoning, the giving of justifications?

Around 24 years later, the government of Pakistan has once again pledged to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Saudi Arabia. Once again, our armed forces may be asked to hunt down the enemies of Saudi Arabia that many in Pakistan think may not be our enemies.

Before we plot our next step or delegate any military assets to Saudi Arabia, we must wait for the Saudi Army to do first things first — decide to fight a conventional war and create a battle space. Such a space has to be created by a force that precedes the main elements in the area of operation. Pakistan should wait and not commit any troops to Saudi Arabia — not until the battle space creating military operations are carried out by the Saudi ground forces across the border in Yemen.

Conducting air strikes in a neighbouring country is an act of war but Yemen has not as yet declared war on Saudi Arabia nor does it have with its divided and disintegrated conventional military power, a single functional civil and military executive authority to coordinate and execute a military action that can challenge the military might of Saudi Arabia. All ground indicators suggest that there will be no Yemeni military incursion inside the Saudi territory. Not in the near future.

The Saudi air strikes have already targeted the heavy military machinery, aircraft, ballistic missile sites and military warehouses held by the Houthi rebels and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s forces, so it has already degraded Yemen’s military capability. Saudi Arabia also possesses some of the world’s most high-tech gadgets for intelligence, surveillance, communications and weapons. It is already constructing an Israel-like 600 mile-long border wall on its entire border length with Iraq to guard against the growing Islamic State threat from there. Most of its 1,100-mile border with Yemen is also fenced. Given the methods and manners of Saudi border enforcement and the high-tech gadgetry that complements it, there is little likelihood of non-state actors like the Houthi rebels of crossing over the Saudi border and challenging its security.

There is no typical external conventional military threat that Saudi Arabia faces on either side of its border. What worries the Saudi monarchy is an Arab spring-like uprising from within. To combat any civil uprising, it needs an internal homeland defence and an able force that can arrest suspected militants in law enforcement type operations. Is the Pakistan military looking at playing any role in support of the Saudi security forces? Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has conditioned the military support to Saudi Arabia on the grounds of territorial threat to that country. With no such threat imminent — the media hype created in Pakistan on why the Pakistan Army should or should not help Saudi Arabia’s fight against Yemen are mostly unfounded and unjustified.

I only hope that the vociferous military assistance and assurances by the government of Pakistan to Saudi Arabia are not hastily matched with actions on ground. At least not until a genuine external military capability threatens the Saudi territorial integrity.

I also hope that now if we commit our army to safeguard and secure Saudi territorial integrity, then unlike the Gulf War, it is done with the sole purpose and mission of our professional army fighting for a given cause.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th,  2015.

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