The media recently carried the details of the visiting special adviser to the Saudi ministry of religious affairs, Mr Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Alamar’s instructive but amazingly brash interview on what Saudi Arabia expects out of Pakistan in the ongoing Yemen conflict. He beats the UAE’s impetuous Deputy Minister Dr Gargash by a wide margin in dearth of diplomatic decorum, sensitivity towards the host country’s sentiments and expression of disrespect towards Pakistan’s parliament. Mr Gargash’s irritation is understandable as his country, being the world’s pleasure capital and, after Switzerland, largest recipient of the planet’s unexplained money, must threaten Pakistan’s power elite who have, without exception, heavily invested their loot in the UAE and have simultaneously received free gifts of massive property from the Emirate when in power. He seems to be badly singed at the apparent loss of their ‘investment’ in such an ungrateful troop of slippery men. He should have known better.
Mr Alamar has outdone the amateurish UAE deputy minister by miles but in more substantive ways than mere leisure or money. We must grant the Saudis a method to their madness. They selected the religious affairs adviser to deliver the message, not for his piety alone but also for his intimate knowledge about who out of the whole congress of our religious parties and clerics has eaten how much out of their hand. They know that these people have street power and are quite close to the ruling party. Some of them have already started to invent and propagate a ghost threat to Mecca and Medina so that public clamour is built up to force or support the teetering government to dispatch troops. As a rule, no religious affairs adviser ever talks of shifting armies from one to the other theatre of war. He carries his brief and has a game plan, regardless.
Just see what he had to say. When asked about our parliament’s resolution to keep away from the conflict in Yemen, he said “I do not want to comment on the internal affairs of Pakistan but the Kingdom’s expectations from Pakistan are very justifiable and rational when we say join us to fight against a cruel minority (Houthis) to save an oppressed majority in Yemen.” Note the veiled disrespect to parliament’s decision. Or was he trying to obliquely reinforce the going impression about parliament’s perennial ineffectiveness? Both attempts are loaded and an uncalled for slight from a diplomatic guest who is trying to overstay his welcome. Then he went on to reveal much more than a seasoned diplomat would but quite in keeping with the verbose habits of his pulpit-mounting ilk. According to him, “Yemen is also an Arab country like us and the people of Yemen are like us. Zaidis are also Sunnis and we are not targeting them.” These are their terms of endearment. One has to be an Arab and Sunni of their convoluted version. This effectively excludes Pakistanis altogether. His assertion that follows takes the cake. After making a militarily absurd and geo-physically improbable statement that if the Arab Coalition forces had not targeted rebels, the integrity of the Kingdom and holy places would have been in danger, he boasted: “We can defend ourselves against any external aggression.” If so, what is the unholy scramble about? Why is everyone under your black tent, including your second fiddle UAE, screaming for the Pakistani armed forces to join the Arab coalition against the Houthis? By no stretch of the imagination should we have anything to do with those highway robbers and tribal fighters in Yemen. Dr Alamar may please take some time out to enlighten on us how he claims Saudi expectation of immediate troop dispatch from Pakistan, completely disregarding our parliament as “justifiable and rational”? Is there a strategic defence agreement between the two? If so, why did it never come into action when Pakistan needed it the most, say towards the end of our Kargil misadventure or during the 1965 and 1971 wars?
A few things emerge quite clearly from Dr Alamar’s exclusive interview to one of our English language newspapers: you have to be an Arab and likeminded Sunni to be spared the Saudi cannon shot and the ragtag Houthi armed rabble can actually threaten the Saudi kingdom, which has standing armed forces equipped with highly sophisticated and most advanced weapon systems in the world. Unbelievable it might appear but there is an element of truth to this. The fact is that Saudi Arabia’s armed forces are not really designed for a pitched battle or to undertake an invasion. Historically, they have always relied on ‘friends’ to fight for them should an occasion arise. Twice in the last 20 years, the US obliged. This time around, the US is having second thoughts, therefore the Kingdom’s gaze towards miskeen (timid) Pakistanis.
The Saudi flag march into Bahrain was not an invasion but a drive-in-drive-out kind of excursion. My brief tenure in Saudi Arabia showed that Yemenis, especially Houthis, had invariably kept the Saudi forces in that region on the hop. Saudi garrisons in Najran and Sharawra remain customarily quite uneasy because of frequent Yemeni (Houthi) raids materialising from across the border. However, no Yemeni military commander in his sound mind would ever undertake an invasion of the Kingdom along the difficult ridgelines of Khamis Mushait-Taif mountains or through the world’s most dreadful desert, called the empty quarter. Out of this mighty military build up, their air force pilots were found to be extraordinarily robust, which is why their air strikes against Houthi targets are so effective.
The justifiability and rationality that Dr Alamar is talking about could make sense only if the two billion dollars ‘gift’ to the present government from the Saudis is considered earnest money and if the Saudis are looking forward to a return of the favour from the Sharifs for rescuing them and then sheltering them in Jeddah. One has known for a long time the Saudi influence peddling in and among Pakistani political leaders and almost all segments of our society. Their route to these men is paved by our proverbial umbilical cord linked to Mecca and Medina, and generously shovelled petro dollars into the empty pits of our needs and poverty. Our armed forces’ internal culture is essentially secular and down to earth, therefore much less enamoured by any emotive extra territorial appeals like the one the Saudi advisor had come to propound. It is still not clear what really makes the Saudis and their UAE colleagues think that we owe them the instant compliance to their unusually persistent, rather threatening demand that Pakistan’s armed forces must join the Arab military coalition cobbled together by the Kingdom against Houthi rebels. Our friends must kindly understand that our soldiers are not for sale and that we have serious business at home to attend to.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]