Not quite The Great Game

The struggle for supremacy between the Persians and the Arabs is centuries old and has never thrown up an outright winner. At no time, historically, have the states of the Indian subcontinent been a party to the struggle. History aside, Pakistan now stands at the edge of a geopolitical abyss as it mulls the possibility of taking sides in a war that is none of its business. Two days of scrappy parliamentary debate reveals that there is little or no support for the sitting government in terms of bolstering Saudi Arabia militarily and the PM is now considering holding an all-parties conference in camera to gain some sort of consensus. All in all a textbook example of how not to formulate and conduct foreign policy.

It should perhaps be pointed out that Saudi Arabia has a large and well equipped army and air force and at no time in the current conflict in Yemen has the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia been threatened, nor has there been any threat to the holy sites within its borders. Not that that matters a jot or tittle to those playing something that is most definitely not the greatest of games.

Moving the parliamentary circus behind closed doors inspires no confidence and inevitably leads one to wonder what it is that we are not being told… and there is precious little that we have been told thus far. There is something almost pitiable as the various officers of the government dodge and weave through the cats-cradle that is of their own making. The PM appears — we have no detail on what was agreed — to have made a unilateral agreement with the Saudis to support them in their action against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Making commitments like that without having at least a modicum of parliamentary support which is cross-party is a shot in both feet. And he should have known that.

There is a distinct impression that not only the government but the other political parties are somewhat at sea in this imbroglio. All are to a greater or lesser degree hamstrung by a dependency on Saudi Arabia that stretches back decades and which nobody down the years ever seems to have seen as a possible albatross.

It is of course possible that the government is playing a game that is a version of the ‘masterly inactivity’ that the British played at one stage of the real Great Game. The reaching out to Turkey and the call to consult with Iran amount to very little in real terms. But it looks and sounds good. It speaks of peace not war, of diplomacy not bombing and it hints at Pakistan as an honest broker, a facilitator working with all parties behind the scenes to find a diplomatic solution in Yemen.

Whether Pakistan has the heft to pull off something as complex as that is the great unanswered question of the day. All this busy-ness is a very effective way of deferring making good on an agreement that was made in private between the PM and his close team and the Saudis, an agreement that is now blowing up in his face by the hour.

Spectating, and trying to make sense of all this from the far distance, filtered through the multiple prisms of assorted media is a fraught business. Nobody — literally nobody out of the many I have spoken to in the last fortnight on this matter — thinks that it is a good idea to militarily support Saudi Arabia in an operation that looks suspiciously like an illegal incursion on the territory of another state.

Equally, nobody that I have spoken to is of the opinion that the government is going to take into account the public mood in respect of joining a fighting coalition that would have unknown consequences within the country. Unknown with certainty that is, but possible to speculate on with a fair degree of certainty.

The extended follies of governance are meat-and-potatoes to the scribbling classes, but this time there is a susurrus of real fear on the breeze. Getting this one wrong is going to have consequences for Pakistan that will redound for decades. Tread softly.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2015.

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