The war within a
religion in the Afro-Arab world is set to intensify if Pakistan responds
positively to Saudi Arabia’s appeal and joins the military offensive against
the Shia militants in Yemen.While the GHQ (Pakistan Army General Headquarters)
in Rawalpindi has thus far kept the cards close to its chest, the Saudi siren
call as it were lends a new dimension to the relentless turmoil in the Middle
East.
It is open to
question whether Pakistan will agree to open an offshore flank, indeed a
terrifying new chapter in its war against the fundamentalists.
The forward movement on Iraq’s nuclear
potential in the conference of the P-5 plus One in Lausanne appears to have
prompted the desert kingdom to play a more aggressive role in the region.
It now wants Pakistan to join its air offensive
against the Shia rebellion that has ousted the Yemeni president and now
controls a vast swathe of the country.
Saudi Arabia arguably feels threatened by the
possible return of Iran to official Western favour, if indications from the
Swiss city are any indication.
There is little doubt that Riyadh is betraying
signs of aspiring to become a major belligerent in a region where Syria, Iraq
and Lebanon are already torn apart by devastating civil wars.The geopolitical
power-play is no less a destabilising factor than the Shia revolt in Yemen and
the surge of the Caliphate elsewhere.
Should Pakistan join the Saudi concert, Yemen
is bound to wallow further in the melting-pot.The sectarian strife has provoked
the Head of State to take the first flight out of Saana. In the net, there is a
vacuum of state power in Yemen.
As in the stormcentres of the Arab region, this
vacuum has enabled the ISIS jihadists and other Islamist fundamentalists to
spread their influence and perpetrate further atrocities.Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan have traditionally maintained cordial relations.
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia had sent money and
material -- via Pakistan -- to the mujahidin fighting the Soviets in
Afghanistan.P
akistan, for its part, has provided the Saudis
with military assistance. Now by directly asking Islamabad to join the Yemen
operations, Riyadh seems intent on opening a new phase in the relationship.The
military-diplomatic paradigm is fluid. There is a robust opinion in Pakistan
against involvement.
Not the least because Yemen has not threatened
Saudi Arabia’s integrity. The other deterrent is the forbidding Shia-Sunni
tension in Pakistan.Yet another and still more crucially, Pakistan shares a
long border with Iran, and relations between the two have recently improved.
By intervening in a new sectarian war, the
ferment within the Islamic bloc will become still more intractable.
Geostrategy ought to avert an extension --
beyond borders -- of the Shia-Sunni conflagration. Enough have died already. Editorial
Jakarta Post
Why Now for a Joint Arab Force?
ReplyDeleteThe Arab League’s decision to establish a joint military force should be viewed, above all, as a major accomplishment for Saudi Arabian foreign policy — though Egypt’s president has also been advocating this. It comes with serious risks, however.
It all starts with Riyadh. As Arab Spring uprisings appeared to sweep all before them in 2011, the Saudi regime seemed confident that it was immune. Even after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s swift fall from power.
The Saudi leadership’s lack of assurance was betrayed, however, by a series of panicky steps.
King Abdullah, who recently died, quickly went on Saudi television to announce extraordinary subsidies, salary raises, an expansion of security forces and more — essentially dispersing tens of billions of dollars in payments to the Saudi people.
For added insurance, the Saudis proposed an expanded Gulf Cooperation Council that would include the Arab world’s two other monarchies, Jordan and Morocco. It was more a financial-aid package to create a force of like-minded regimes that could deal with possible insurgencies.
ReplyDeleteEgypt was then on the other side of the equation: a revolutionary state under the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis never trusted.
With the new pan-Arab force, however, Riyadh has built something far bigger. Not just because of the number of Arab states likely to join, but also because Egypt has pledged to be a central partner.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi gains a great deal in the process. It could lock in the billions of dollars in Saudi aid he has come to depend on, and elevates the role of Egypt’s military, from which he hails. But Sisi also has something to lose: If he sends troops to a futile war in Yemen, a comparison to Egypt’s former popular leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, which Sisi has sought to cultivate, could come back to haunt him. For Nasser’s 1960s intervention in Yemen was a failure.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, though, the most effective Arab actions have come through a Saudi-Egyptian alliance. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, for example, perhaps the Arab states’ most effective war of the 20th century, was fought largely by Egyptian and Syrian troops. But the Saudis, along with Algerians and other Arabs, played a key role economically and politically because oil was an essential weapon.
In 1991, when Saudi Arabia decided to cooperate with a US-led force to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, Riyadh was emboldened to participate by Cairo, whose support Washington had secured even before asking the Saudis.
Now the Saudis confront the need for immediate action in Yemen. Though Saudi Arabia’s decision to play a war-fighting role is bold and new, no one can underestimate the challenges ahead. Particularly if ground forces are ultimately needed, and attacks from Yemen on Saudi territory expand.
ReplyDeleteRiyadh, of course, wants to register that it has finally arrived militarily. Though Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest importer of arms, few nations view the kingdom’s military as a major factor in the regional military balance. The Saudi military role is untested, so Riyadh doesn’t want to be alone in the fight, either politically or militarily.
Meanwhile, Yemen is only an immediate part of a broader Saudi fear that extends far beyond its strategic competition with Iran.
The Saudi concern about Iran is not so much a direct military one, nor even about Tehran’s nuclear potential. True, the Saudis don’t want to see Iran become a nuclear power.
But Riyadh’s biggest worry is Iran’s expanding political influence in Arab lands, especially in its neighborhood.
That competition is, at its core, not sectarian. But it exacerbates sectarianism in a way that’s threatening to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis do worry about the rise of Iranian-backed Shiite Arabs.
ReplyDeleteBut what they have discovered is that sectarianism can also nurture the type of Sunnis who want the regime’s demise even more than some of the Shiites do.
In that sense, Riyadh’s fear in the early days of the Arab Spring has been modified. The Arab public’s stalled aspirations after what looked like early successes, coupled with the continuing tragedies in Syria, Libya and Yemen, have put the brakes on those who may have revolted elsewhere in the Arab world.
Yet the vacuum created by these stalled uprisings, the failed states and the intensifying sectarianism has given militant Islamists more recruits and a passionate mission that targets the Gulf monarchies as enemies.
Islamic State served as a wake-up call for the Saudis and other Arabs. Not only because of its ruthlessness and swift expansion. But also because IS’s focus is far different from that of al-Qaeda, which, though it opposed Arab regimes, targets the United States and largely operates far from the Arab heartland in Afghanistan. IS, by contrast, is intent on changing the regimes in Arab lands.
ReplyDeleteIt operates in Saudi Arabia’s backyard and could become a serious problem on the home front, far more than Saudi Shiites could ever be.
The pan-Arab force is also designed to be partly political. It spreads the responsibility and the blame. It could provide added legitimacy beyond the resolutions of the Arab League, which most Arabs long ago stopped taking seriously.
A key point, though, is that the force provides a formula for broadening the Egyptian-Saudi relationship, now essential for both countries, into an Arab arrangement. Its very creation, at a time when Arabs seemed inept, divided and incapable of taking things into their own hands, is psychologically important. It registers strong resolve just before an anticipated deal between Iran and world powers on the nuclear issue, which Arab rulers fear will expand Tehran’s influence at their expense.
In addition, the joint Arab force has a potentially important, if limited, military role. It is hard to imagine, for example, that it could face down militarily powerful states such as Iran, Israel or a Western power. It’s principally aimed at insurgencies within the Arab world — and not even all of them.
ReplyDeleteConsider: Given Iraq’s largely Shiite government, Iran’s influence there and the US role, it is hard to envision a circumstance in which Arabs could intervene.
As for Syria, the Saudis are caught between their hatred for IS and their hatred for President Bashar al-Assad. Riyadh’s vision for Syria does not exactly coincide with that of Egypt, which also doesn’t like Assad but fears his collapse more. The tension over this issue was reflected in the recent Arab summit, when Sisi welcomed a statement by Assad’s backer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Saudi officials pointedly criticized it.
In the short term, though, the Saudi vision is for using the Arab force in the growing chaos in Yemen, while the Egyptian vision is for using it in the growing chaos in Libya.
For most others outside the Gulf Cooperation Council, the pan-Arab effort is about reaping economic and political rewards. That may be enough to make it work. But the real test is likely to come soon enough in the outcome of the Arab intervention in Yemen, even if that takes place before the joint force is formally established.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest obstacle to an effective joint Arab force, however, may be larger than even the typical differences among Arabs: Dealing with insurgencies and failed states — the problem the force was created to address — requires more political and economic means than military prowess.
Shibley Telhami is author of “The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East.” He is Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Marylan