With the plunge of Syria, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon in chaos, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Shia rule in Iraq facing imminent threat of de-stabilization while Gaza is being reduced to rubble by the relentless Israel, the Arab states are individually engaged in a desperate exercise for survival.
I feel a strong repulsion to see the ever shrinking role of the OIC in the Muslim world and the Arab League and the GCC in the Arab affairs. All these organizations have been rendered redundant at the global and the regional levels by the mutually harmful Arab hostilities and the ever deepening vulnerability of the wealthy Arab states to the machinations of the global power politics.
Being bogged down in endless conspiracies to undermine each other, triggering coups, civil strife, sectarian proxy wars and bloody conflicts in their region and beyond, they are forced to outsource the security of their thrones and oil wealth to the globally and regionally powerful states which, to a large extent, control their foreign and strategic policies too. Nations shackled by fear, insecurity and over-indulgence in luxurious living cease to create men of dazzle and courage destined to change their direction. The Muslim world is muddling through such a barren phase of history.
Nations shackled by fear, insecurity and over-indulgenc cease to create men of dazzle and courage.
Over a century or so, the Arabs have been living with foreign support from the Ottoman Caliphates to T.E Lawrence and the British and French Protectorate. The nascent kingdom of Saudi Arabia struck an alliance with the USA in 1945 conceding the American control over their oil exploration and trade. In tandem with the US policy, the Saudi monarchs were at loggerhead with the Arab nationalist and radical states. The Middle East remained divided into so called moderate and radical states. This division remained intact until Egypt veered to the Western stables after the Camp David Accords, and Iraq, Libya and Syria were reduced to the pale shadows of their erstwhile political stability and power fuelling the sectarian rivalries.
The most suffering country in the Arab world has been the impoverished Yemen ever subjected to the mutually disastrous Arab intrigues since decades. In the 1960s, the civil strife supported by Saudis and the radical states divided it into two states – the nationalist South Yemen and the monarchist North Yemen. The country reunited just a few decades ago with Ali Abdullah Saleh, an anathema to the Saudi monarchs, at the helm of affairs. The wave of public protests in the Arab world in so called Arab Spring also overwhelmed Yemen largely fuelled by Arab monarchs to get rid of President Saleh and to bring in power Abdu Rab Al-Mansoor, the Vice President and a favorite of the Saudis.
President Al-Mansoor, challenged by the rebellion of Shia population, particularly Houthis living a subdued and deprived life in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, could not hold onto the slippery pole of power and had to flee to Riyadh where he has been staying since past many years. The rest – the formation of a coalition force of many Arab countries to thwart the takeover of the country by the Houthis – is too recent to warrant any elaboration. However, the war in Yemen has exposed many foreign and security policy weaknesses of the Arab countries.
The Arab Spring would have culminated into functional democracies in some Arab countries like in Tunisia had the US-led Western states resisted the machinations of the wealthy Arab states to settle their old scores in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
They were also complicit in the military coup d état against the elected President Muhammad Morsi in Egypt giving a carte blanche to the new Egyptian military leader for a crackdown against the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin. The Ikhwans are spread over almost all the Arab countries including Turkey. All Arab states from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain to Turkey are over-obsessed with the fear of Ikhwans. The Ikhwans reflect the deep division of the Arab societies into secular and liberals and ideologically motivated Islamists.
The wealthy Arab countries were apprehensive about the ambivalent Middle East policy of President Barak Obama in his second term. The rhetoric of the candidate Donald Trump at his election trail blowing hot and cold about the intractability of the Middle Eastern conundrum and his threats to pull out of the messy region only added to the Arabs’ fear forcing them to look for other reliably powerful states for strategic partnership.
We may recall the French President François Hollande and the British Prime Minister Theresa May were particularly invited to the GCC Summits before the US presidential elections. Prime Minister May went out of her way to reassure the Summit for help to push Iran away from the Middle East or curtail its hegemonic ambitions.
Faced with the escalating civil war in Yemen, they explored the possibility of Pakistan making military contributions for crushing the rebellious Houthis in 2015. The year had also witnessed the conclusion of the comprehensive nuclear deal between the US and Iran exacerbating the fear of Israel and the Arab countries. We maintained our long-held neutrality in intra-Arab conflicts. The Arab brothers vented their anger by according a red carpet welcome to Narendra Modi at the heel of the visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif. The Foreign Minister of UAE had also issued a veiled threat to Pakistan for its defiance of their ‘command’.
They had taken Pakistan for granted for strategic help after its willing contributions to the security of Saudi Arabia in 1979 and the deployment of over 20,000 soldiers on Saudi borders in the 1990s. However, we assured the Saudis that Pakistan would be ever willing to help defend the security of Saudi Arabia. Later, they played an important role to get Pakistani retired soldiers employed by Bahrain in the thick of the Shia uprising in that country. They made it a point to ensure that the soldiers were Sunnis. This was not lost on Iran which was being contained by the Arab states.
(To be concluded)
The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.