Do not waver, stand fast

Yemen conflict has provided us an opportunity to recalibrate our relations with Arab world

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the rest of the Arab world generally are still having difficulty getting to grips with the fact that Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy. The clearest indication of this was that when the chief minister of Punjab visited recently as part of the operation to apply salve to the bruised egos inside the Arab tent, he was told by the Saudis that they had not expected the government to refer the matter to parliament as their need was “urgent”. The unspoken expectation was that Pakistan would jump to the Arab call without consulting its primary legislative body, and that the prime minister would act unilaterally in committing our armed forces to an operation of dubious legitimacy. It must at the very least be doubtful that the military would respond to prime ministerial direction under such a circumstance with anything other than a polite demurral.

Further evidence of frustration to say nothing of confusion comes in the form of an informal interview with the acting Saudi Ambassador to Pakistan, Jassim bin Mohammed Al-Khalidi. He asked how Pakistanis would feel “if we do the same with you in time of crisis?” The answer to that depends very much on how ‘crisis’ is defined. At no time in the current Yemen conflict was the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia threatened, not even remotely, and militarily the collective Arab states had more than enough hardware to damage the Houthis which they did. Pakistan is correctly committed to supporting Saudi Arabia if and when there is a threat to the holy sites, and equally correctly taking a middle line diplomatically, not committing to either side in such a way as to alienate any state — but at the expense of ruffling feathers in the Arab world which is unused to being told ‘no’. Pakistan is displaying a welcome maturity in this matter, and a more sophisticated understanding of local and regional geopolitics. A recalibration of our relations with the Arab world was long overdue, and the Yemen conflict has paradoxically provided an opportunity rather than a threat.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st,  2015.

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