For decades, Pakistan’s
approach to the Middle East has been shaped by two competing heritages:
religious and post-colonial. But the rise of new power poles in the Middle East,
together with the international response to Paris after last week’s deadly
attack, will likely heighten the need for a hard Middle East policy review in
Islamabad in the coming days.
This year, Pakistan’s ties to the Middle East have weathered increasing
geopolitical uncertainty. While Iran came out of the cold, Yemen went under.
With the Islamic State (IS) drawing strength and potency from fatal western
policy miscalculations in Iraq, it has become clear that the absence of any real
P5 consensus on solving the crisis in the Middle East will only hasten the
region’s unraveling and the diffusion of terrorist cells as far east as South
Asia. New drivers of tension in the Israel-Palestine conflict, meanwhile,
require proactive policy decisions in Islamabad to mitigate any political
fallout on the Pakistani street.
After Beirut and Paris, Islamabad will also have to define its security
interests and cultivate partners in the Middle East beyond a Riyadh-Tehran
binary. Pakistan shares a 560 mile desert border with Iran but also shares
maritime waters with Gulf countries. Pakistan’s status as the second-largest
member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), together with its lead
role in Combined Task Force 151, a multinational naval task force set up to
respond to pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, puts it in a position to steer
multilateral security conversations in the region. In addition, Pakistan’s
ambitious plans to develop the Gwadar port into South Asia’s newest gateway to
the Arab Peninsula make it a consequential if subsidiary player in an
increasingly unstable Gulf Cooperation Council region. To the west, Qatar’s role
in facilitating an intra-Afghan reconciliation process and hosting a de-facto
Taliban office makes it an increasingly important stakeholder for Pakistan to
engage with smartly. On the commercial side, Islamabad hopes a deal to import
Qatari liquefied natural gas for the next 15 years will supplement a separate,
Russian-sponsored, $2 billion Karachi-Lahore gas pipeline that will feed
Pakistan’s energy-starved industries.
In the wake of IS’s deadly attacks on Paris and Beirut, it is all the more
imperative that Pakistan temper its position in a U.S.-Russia standoff in the
Levant with an eye on preserving South Asia’s own precarious stability. Moscow’s
play for primacy in the Middle East via military action in Syria may foreshadow
interventionist ambitions in Afghanistan and Pakistan as Vladimir Putin looks to
remodel his neighborhood. A contract for the sale of four Mi-35 transport and
attack helicopters from Russia to Pakistan was finalized in August and President
Ashraf Ghani in Kabul is increasingly looking to the Kremlin for military
hardware. Now as Russian support for the Assad regime drives up the
international community’s stakes in the Middle East — a region where both
neutrality and non-intervention carry a price-tag — Pakistan must tread
cautiously.
Under Saudi pressure in 2014, Pakistan came precipitously close to abdicating
its non-partisan policy in Syria. With China now adding its name to a list of
global powers calling for a political solution in Syria, pressure is likely to
mount on Pakistan to clarify its position at the United Nations. And while
Pakistan may be on the periphery of Syria’s killing fields, the diffusion of IS
and its splinter cells to ‘Khorasan’ training camps in Afghanistan has given
rise to considerable strategic anxiety in Islamabad. Of particular concern to
Pakistan will be the long-term viability of any prospective anti-IS coalition,
in the absence of real and meaningful plans to stabilize an Afghan regime that
is already under attack. The eastern hillsides of Achin, Kot, Haska Mina, and
Pachir Agam in Nangarhar province — a stone’s throw away from an embattled
Pakistani border — have become strategic IS footholds, where locals are now
forced to carry ‘Khorasan’ residency cards. The Islamic State is presently
recruiting in as many as 25 out of 34 Afghan provinces, as suggested by a recent
U.N. report.
As warfare and migrations fracture twentieth century nation-state boundaries
across the Middle East and North Africa, Islamabad may have to rethink its
partnerships within the region, beginning with its longtime partner, Saudi
Arabia. Pakistani pilots flew Royal Saudi Air Force planes against South Yemen
in 1969 and Pakistani troops were deployed in the kingdom at the height of the
first Iraq War. In return, the Saudis have bailed Pakistan out financially and
diplomatically in times of trouble. But there is growing parliamentary pushback
in Islamabad to Saudi Arabia’s perceived stewardship of Pakistan’s Middle East
policy. Last year Pakistan rejected a request by its “most allied” ally in the
Middle East to deploy troops against Bahrain and displayed the same reluctance
to join Saudi Arabia’s fight in Yemen this spring.
The number of madrassas in Pakistan fed by Saudi funding and operated with
minimal federal oversight is also giving rise to increasing skepticism in
Islamabad. This summer, Saudi Arabia suffered major attacks, claimed by IS, on
Shiite mosques and gatherings. In the coming decade, increasing instability in
the oil kingdom is likely to up the geopolitical ante. Unstable oil prices, a
resistance to internal reform, wars in Syria and Yemen, and simmering discontent
in Bahrain (which recruits Pakistanis for its law enforcement and paramilitary
forces) all mean that Riyadh may seek to strengthen its relationship with
Pakistan at the same time that Pakistan tries to diversify its regional
alliances.
If Saudi Arabia comes knocking, Islamabad’s lawmakers insist that Pakistan’s
answer be rooted in a broader strategic objective: cracking down on terrorist
financing from the Gulf, reining in rogue madrassas as part of its now year-old
National Action Plan, worrying less about Saudi rebuke, and building
partnerships across the Gulf with public transparency as their baseline.
One such partner may be found in Iran. Geographic contiguity and greater
cooperation between Islamabad and Tehran could lead to progress on tough issues
related to drug trafficking, cross-border terrorism, and transnational security.
An anti-IS alliance running from Tehran to Torkham on the Pakistani border could
fend off further terrorist intrusion into South Asia in a way that Saudi Arabian
cooperation has been unable to deliver.
Such coordination on security issues could bolster good will between Iran and
Pakistan on shared economic interests as well. The trust deficit that resulted
between the two countries from the stalled IP gas pipeline project could be
restored. Diplomatic tensions could be relieved if Iran granted Pakistani
citizens the same right it applies to Indian citizens, the right to visit Iran
without a travel visa. Trade between Pakistan and Iran has the potential to grow
by $5 billion, but is stymied by under-utilized bilateral mechanisms — namely, a
number of joint commissions on road transport, economic relations, and border
management. Through progress on security issues and stronger economic ties,
Pakistan’s renewed relationship with Iran could potentially benefit the entire
region.
Over the next half century, Pakistan will be embroiled in the chaos spilling
across the Arabian Peninsula, from sectarianism to state solvency to the growing
IS influence that Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif called “a bigger
threat than al-Qaeda.” To meet these challenges, Pakistan will have to deploy
smarter, bolder, and less parochial foreign policy choices. In her first visit
to Islamabad this summer, U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice flagged in
no uncertain terms the American desire for an Afro-Asian coalition to counter
the spread of IS. But before Islamabad joins any U.S.-proposed “Sahel to South
Asia” alliances, Pakistani diplomats would be wise to first frame, and then
anchor, any future anti-IS policy decisions in a national security narrative
that looks beyond decades of partisan Saudi patronage.
In August, the federal interior ministry issued a notification formally
outlawing IS; this must be followed by a comprehensive internal review that
gives teeth to Pakistan’s National Action Plan with the aim of boosting anti-IS
defenses in vulnerable Pakistani cities. The present government will also be
better equipped to flex national security and foreign policy muscle if it brings
parliament into the decision-making fold — which is what happened when the issue
of intervention in Yemen arose — and revitalizes the offices of the National
Security Committee, which has met only four times in the past two-and-a-half
years.
On the diplomatic front, the Pakistani Foreign Office will have to pay
much-needed attention to its MENA desks. A political appointment in Pakistan’s
Tehran or Istanbul stations could significantly increase Pakistan’s diplomatic
presence in this strategically vital part of the world and capitalize on the
strategic as well as commercial potential of three million Pakistanis working in
the Gulf.
Pakistan can also look to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an unexpected
role model for strengthening engagement with the Middle East. This year, Modi
became the first Indian prime minister to visit the United Arab Emirates in 30
years. In back-to-back meetings over two days, the Indian leader interacted with
heads of state, business communities, and Indian expatriates. India’s historical
dependence on Gulf oil, together with a growing economy, will likely spell
increasing engagement with the Middle East over the next decade. Later this
year, Modi is due to visit Tehran, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv (in the case of the
latter, becoming the first Indian prime minister to do so).
There are lessons for Pakistan to learn in India’s smart “Link West” approach to
the Middle East. But following through on change will require action and
sustained commitment, in line with Pakistan’s now well-established interest in
regional peace and stability. Given the Islamic State’s steady eastward advance,
Pakistan will have to think seriously about rebooting, and executing, an
informed Middle East strategy — one that can withstand a new generation of
security and diplomatic challenges.
(Special thanks to Mr.Humayun for this article)