Burning Our Fingers in Yemen?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

We should thank our stars that Pakistan is still a democracy—in name, at least. Had it not been so, Raja Nawaz Sharif would already have ordered the Pakistan army to make a dash for Yemen to pull the Saudi chestnut out of its fire.

That NS is deeply beholden to the Saudi royals is an understatement. Had they not interceded on his behalf—with a nod from their lords in Washington, no doubt—a besotted and cavalier General Pervez Musharraf would’ve done to him what Ziaul Haq did to Zulfi Bhutto—and NS would long have been done and forgotten.

But what great sin has the nation of 180 million Pakistanis done that their clueless PM should pay back his personal debt to the Saudis with the blood and honour of Pakistan?

If anybody in Pakistan still needed to be reminded how miserably amateurish and tentative their third-term and ‘experienced’ leader is in affairs of policy—both at home and abroad—then they should only read his statement avowing Pakistan’s unflinching support to Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity. The corpulent Pakistani ‘leader’ wouldn’t let anyone in the world move a finger against the ‘integrity’ of his ‘second home-away-from home.’

I’ve never, personally, had any fancy notions about the cerebral quality of NS, having observed him at close quarters many a times in my career. The attention span of the man never crosses the single-digit limit—in terms of minutes. It seems that age—and layers of fat—have dulled his visceral span to a perennially abysmal low.

But where did he get this trope into his mind that Saudi Arabia is in mortal danger of being overrun by a shadowy enemy, or shadowy enemies, and must be protected by the valiant jawans and officers of the brave Pakistan army?

Perhaps none of the drooling and fawning clutch of ‘advisors’ and ‘special assistants’ that he has surrounded himself with—his so-called ‘kitchen cabinet’—has dared mention to him that his beloved Saudi Arabia is the aggressor against Yemen and it’s the Yemenis that are in dire need of help to save them against the Saudi vengeance.

Forget that the Saudi royals had long been nursing an incontinent urge—and nurturing plans—to unleash the might of their state-of-the-art weaponry against the rag-tag bands of the Houthi insurgents in Yemen. The ‘sin’ of the Houthis was that they had hobbled—and eventually chased out—the puppet the Saudi royals had installed in Sanaa’s presidential palace to do their bidding.

Forget that it’s inconceivable—given the state of closeness between the Saudi royals and their American ‘overseers’ and mentors—that Obama and everybody else down the pecking order in Washington weren’t consulted and taken into confidence on these plans. The Saudis never even wink before clearing it, in advance, with their American allies. And that this tradition goes back decades. The White House and State Department spokespersons have, brazenly, admitted that the Americans are into this thing up to their eyeballs and furnishing their Saudi ‘friends’ logistical and technical ‘advice.’

But don’t forget to ask the question that comes naturally to mind what interest of Pakistan is at stake in the Yemeni imbroglio?

In the latest developments in Yemen—bordering on anarchy and civil war—Washington has for quite some time been smelling collusion between the not-too-friendly-to-the Saudis Houthis and Iran, which in turn has long been a bone in the American crotch.

But that, again, takes us back to the question: what the hell is of interest, or concern, to Islamabad in the fratricidal conflict that Yemen has been for so long?

The Saudi royals may be sweating down their spines at the grisly prospect of the Iranians quietly hunkering down in the thicket that Yemen has always been to Riyadh under the cloak of the Houthis. They may swear to it that the Houthis could never have been so daring and so very successful against the Saudi puppets in Sanaa had they not been propped and equipped with weapons by Tehran.

The Saudis have long been tugging at the apron string of their American masters and beseeching them to give a bloodied nose to the Iranians for their perceived ambition to become a nuclear power.

The Saudis—despite mounds of hi-tech American weaponry in their burgeoning arsenal—don’t have the daring, or dash, to have a go at Iran. And, to their regret, they don’t have a Saddam Hussein, a la 1980, to invade Iran at their bidding.

So what could be better for them than pounce upon the Houthis, perceived clients of Iran, in order to settle some scores with the Iranians. ‘If we can’t rub your nose in the dirt on the nuclear issue, we can certainly get at your wards in Yemen,’ may well be the Saudi refrain and a clear and categorical notice to Tehran that Riyadh has run out of patience.

The Saudi royals may feel elated that their American mentors are fully on board with them in their Yemeni (mis)adventure. But they couldn’t be more naïve if they think this may stay the American hand and dampen Washington’s urge to cut a deal with Tehran on the nuclear thing, much as the Saudis may bemoan it.

It couldn’t be more bizarre—if not ridiculous and outrageously ironic—that the Americans and the Saudis are at one in going after the Iranian proxies in Yemen, while the Americans and the Iranians are together involved in the costly struggle to flush out the dare-devils of ISIL, suspected to have been baptised by the Saudis.

The dummy states making up the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) couldn’t do other than what they have: standing dumbly behind their Saudi big-brothers against Yemen. They are but a classical embodiment of the old dictum: zero-pus-zero-plus zero-is equal-to zero.

However, fighting a war is another matter, and the petro-rich GCC denizens know not how to fight a war. But they think they’ve enough dough to hire mercenaries. That’s exactly what they used to boast to me when I went on assignment to Kuwait after its ‘liberation’ from Iraqi occupation. They said they had the money to hire the best fighting machine in the world—the Americans—to chase the Iraqis out of their country. It was a contract job purchased with petro-dollars.

So the rich Gulf potentates, with bulging pockets, have their eyes on the fighting-fit Pakistanis—the best in the Muslim world—to do their bidding in Yemen. They want to rub the Iranian noses in Yemen’s craggy highland and none fits the bill, in their esteem, than the battle-hardened, rough and tough, Pakistanis to do this, yet another, contract job.

The Saudis and GCC potentates are smugly confident that their man in Islamabad—the accidental PM NS—will not disappoint them. And he hasn’t, thus far.

As these lines are being written, news has just filtered in of a high-level civil-and-military delegation, led by Defence Minister Khwaja Asif—a loyal but clueless factotum of Nawaz—is already in Riyadh to hold talks with the Saudis on their defence requirements. NS, meanwhile, goes on parroting the line that he will not leave the poor Saudis alone in their hour of peril, or trial. He has obviously taken leave of his senses.

Nawaz is persisting in his purblind fidelity to his Saudi and other Arab mentors despite a national chorus of opposition to any Pakistani role in the Yemeni crisis. Imran Khan is leading and galvanizing the national consensus that Pakistan shouldn’t touch Yemen with a barge pole.

It’s clear as daylight even to a layman in Pakistan that his country, government or armed forces should have nothing to do with the crisis that the Saudis have triggered in their frustration, or arrogance, or a combination of both.

Pakistan shall be on the wrong side of history in getting its fingers burned in the fire the Saudis have lit, just as we were on the wrong side of history in 1956 when the then PM, Suharwardy, had cheered the aggressors—Britain, France and Israel—against Egypt. We paid in humiliation for that faux pas. For years, Pakistan was a pariah to the Arabs, especially to the Arab intelligentsia.

Under Ziaul Haq—Nawaz’ mentor—Pakistan acquitted itself with finesse in staying clear of the Iran-Iraq War, of 1980-88. Zia, generally perceived as an acolyte of the Saudis, refused to oblige them when asked to allow the two Pakistani brigades—then stationed on the Saudi soil for the security of the royals and frontiers—to help ease the pressure on Iraq. Zia may be a punching bag to the ire of our intellectuals but he certainly had more savvy than his business-friendly acolyte.

It is crunch time for Pakistan. Will NS have his way and lead Pakistan down a very slippery slope—with clear prospects of Pakistan ending up with a lot of egg on its face—is still a moot question and will remain so as long as a decision for or against participation in the bloody Yemeni conflict doesn’t materialize.

Knowing the chemistry of power in Pakistan and the elements impacting the decision-making process, it may not be a wild guess that the chips, in the end, would fall where the military brass may want them.

Common sense and wisdom says the brass would be shooting itself in the foot if it decided to give NS the green light to oblige his Saudi mentors. The Pakistan army is waging the battle for Pakistan inside its own frontiers. Any digression, or diversion, from it would be a costly, if not colossal, mistake. The Saudi petro-dollars would be but only a pittance of compensation for leaving the task at home unfinished for the sake of bailing the Saudis out of their misadventure.

General Collin Powell’s famous pottery-barn dictum comes to mind for a reminder to the Saudis: if you enter a pottery barn and break its chattels then it’s your duty, alone, to fix it. Pakistanis would be fools if they thought they could fix the Yemeni pottery barn for their myopic and misguided Saudi ‘brothers.’

And NS needs to be reminded of the timelessness of an old Greek adage: those that gods wish to destroy (for their follies and blunders) they turn them mad, first. (The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)

K_K_ghori@yahoo.com