Money talks

Parliamentarians felt it was more important to insult one another when they did sit down to discuss the Yemen crisis

Pakistan and its leaders are in a quandary; the Yemen crisis has caught them all by surprise, notwithstanding that Yemen has been a crisis in the making for the past 30 years. The Nawaz government has effectively worked itself into a hole, and is falsely painting a picture as if it had real freedom of choice about how to proceed in the matter. Pakistan has surrendered its foreign, as well as domestic, sovereignty to those who give us aid. The Land of the Pure takes its marching orders from the US, China, Saudi Arabia, and at times, even our mullahs.

Nearly a year ago, the government of Pakistan mysteriously discovered $2 billion in its account to stabilise the rupee and was reluctant to make public who the generous benefactor was. Rumour ties this money to our friends from the holy lands. In another exchange, China has just signed $46 billion worth of contracts after which Pakistan decided to stay away from the Yemen crisis. These transactions should be taken into consideration when attempting to weigh the independence of decision-making with regard to Yemen.

It is still not clear what this conflict is all about. Is it a political crisis with a sectarian influence or a sectarian crisis with a political effect? Amidst this chaos, one thing is for certain. Saudi Arabia has not been attacked nor is there even such a remote possibility in the immediate future, which then makes the Saudis the aggressors. Yet, our prime minister is obligated to bend over backwards for the Saudis. In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, Nawaz Sharif said “that any aggression on Saudi Arabia will be dealt with strongly and effectively”. Meanwhile, the Saudis continue to say that our parliament’s decision is an internal affair; in other words, it is irrelevant to Pakistan’s duty in physically supporting Saudi Arabia.

There is a possibility that this could be a proxy war with the intent to control the turf in a regional game of power play, amidst the so-called Arab spring that is still being played out. From Iraq to Syria, Libya to Egypt, ideological and political crises have become blurred. Partners in one region find each other to be adversaries in another. If Pakistan does come down on the side of the Saudis, then it upsets China, Iran, and the Houthis. If it does not, the US, Israel, and al Qaeda will be displeased.

The cold indifference of the UN Security Council is also appalling. Its insipid, lukewarm resolution, which does not define who the aggressor or the defender is, fails to establish whether this is a ‘just and legal war’. Will some be tried for war crimes later when it is more convenient? There remain too many powerful questions that need to be discussed and considered by the Pakistani leadership, but the parliamentarians felt it was more important to insult one another and do some political point-scoring when they did sit down to discuss the matter. The prime minister did not feel he even needed to grace the occasion and had to be forced to come by the opposition. This display manifests the importance parliamentarians place on their individual beings as opposed to their duty as elected representatives of the people in such a crisis. They have confirmed that they are irrelevant to the occasion but merely remain a necessary nuisance to sustain the status quo.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th,  2015.

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