Defining the Relationship - What Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Want from Each Other,
By Jonah Blank
“Unfounded,
baseless and untrue,” said Pakistan’s foreign secretaryAizaz Ahmad
Chaudhry earlier this month, when asked whether his nation was
considering the sale of nuclear arms to Saudi Arabia. Earlier this spring, Defense Minister
Khawaja Mohammad Asif reiterated Pakistan’s “pledge to protect
Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity” in response to a request for military
assistance against the House of Saud’s Houthi foes next door. But within days,
Pakistan’s parliament voted unanimously not only against sending troops to
Yemen, but also against even taking sides in the conflict. Despite decades of
lavish funding to Pakistan, the Saudis might wonder what they are getting for
their riyals. And Pakistanis, with all the problems they face in their own
neighborhood, might be amazed that anyone would expect them to plunge into the
treacherous miasma of the Middle East. What to make of the
warm-but-not-too-warm friendship between the wealthiest state in the Sunni
Muslim world, and its most heavily armed one?
This
question is an important one for a simple reason: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are
each other’s wild cards. Each is the other’s out-of-region game-changer, a
factor that must play into the calculations of all other players in the Middle
East and South Asia alike. Think you’ve got the complex equation sorted out of
Arabs vs. Persians, Sunnis vs. Shi’a, Ba’athists vs. Islamists? Well, if
Pakistan decides to throw its weight around the Middle East, you’ll have to
re-tabulate your odds. Think you understand the delicate balance between New
Delhi, Islamabad, Kabul, and Beijing? Well, Riyadh has long been staking one
particular player at this table, and whether it chooses to double down or fold
on its investment will affect everyone else’s bets. To understand the
strategies of both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, one must understand what
underlies their durable but lopsided relationship.
WHAT SAUDI ARABIA WANTS
Maintaining
a deep relationship with Pakistan advances Saudi Arabia’s ambition of expanding
its ideological reach beyond the Arab world. Riyadh tries to achieve this goal
globally, both through highly visible investments and by more covert means.
With great fanfare, the Saudi government builds grand mosques and endows
humanitarian charities; more quietly, it spreads its Salafist doctrine by
funding ideologically focused madrassas, and by paying for clerics and
opinion-shapers to visit, study, or conduct pilgrimages to the Kingdom. For the
Saudi royal family, Pakistan is the ultimate prize: It has the world’s second
largest population of Muslims, and, unlike first-ranked Indonesia,
is constitutionally an “Islamic Republic.” Pakistan was founded explicitly to
provide a homeland for South Asian Muslims. Unlike Muslim-majority countries
such as Bangladesh, the Central Asian Republics, and Turkey; near-majority ones
like Nigeria; or massive-minority ones such as India, Pakistan has a Muslim
identity as part of its national identity and mission. How that mission is
translated into practice, however, is very much up for grabs. And the Saudis
would very much like to grab it.
Saudi Arabia sees Pakistan as a crucial component
of its plan to constrain Iran. Additionally, Saudi
Arabia sees Pakistan as a crucial component of its plan to constrain Iran.
Every Saudi ruler has, as part of his official title, the designation
“Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques:” that is, guardian of Mecca and Medina, the
two most sacred sites in the Muslim world. The regime’s identity is not merely
that of an oil-rich Arab nation, but also as the standard-bearer for Islam. The
most potent challenger to this identity, in both spiritual and political terms,
is Iran—a nation that is also oil-rich and theocratic, but is Persian rather
than Arab and Shi’a rather than Sunni. From the Saudi perspective, one of the
best ways to keep Iran off-balance is to bolster a powerful Sunni rival on its
eastern border. How intense is the rivalry? In 2008, Saudi King Abdullah was
quoted in a cable published via Wikileaks urging the U.S. to attack Iran and “cut the head
off the snake.”
Pakistan
says it won’t provide nuclear technology to the Saudis, and Saudi Arabia says
it has no interest in asking for it. Of course they do. But the father of
Pakistan’s nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, ran the most extensive proliferation
ring the world has ever seen, and remains a national hero. In 2004, after
intense U.S. pressure on Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf,
Khan admitted to
selling nuclear information and technology to Iran, Libya, and
North Korea; he received an immediate pardon, was confined to his luxurious
home, and has lived freely ever since his release in 2009. The Saudis might
well feel that an operation, which was once termed a “Nuclear Walmart,” will not
keep its doors shut for long. And with an $80 billion military budget, the
Saudis might see any tab as “Always Low Prices.”
WHAT
PAKISTAN WANTS
The best things in life are free, but Pakistan
feels these are best left to the birds and bees. What it wants is money, and
the Saudis have provided a lot of it: No comprehensive tally is available
publicly, but over the past four decades the Kingdom has supplied Pakistan with
many billions of dollars in aid through cash, credit, and cut-rate oil. During
the 1980s, Saudi Arabia delivered perhaps half of the
multi-billion-dollar stream channeled through Pakistan to the
anti-Soviet mujahideen. In 1998, when Pakistan’s Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif was deliberating about whether to answer India’s nuclear test with
one of his own, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah reportedly promised 50,000
barrels of oil per day to help Islamabad weather any potential
sanctions.
In
addition to cash, Pakistan is hoping to boost its credibility in the Islamic world.
Pakistan was founded with a Muslim identity—but not necessarily an Islamic one.
What is the distinction? It’s the difference between culture and faith. When
arguing for a nation separate from India, Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad
Ali Jinnah said that Islam and Hinduism “are not
religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and
distinct social orders.” Jinnah was himself hardly a rigorous
observer of Islamic practices, and his nation’s transition from homeland for
Muslims to Islamic Republic occurred only after his death. By far the most
significant period of Islamization was the 1977–88 tenure of General Zia-ul
Haq—a period that corresponded, whether by intent or coincidence, with the
blossoming of the relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Indeed,
Sharif was reported to have “become a member
of the Saudi royal family” when, according to a diplomatic cable,
his daughter married a grandson of King Fahd.
Unlike the assistance provided by Washington, Saudi
Arabia’s infusion came with no strings attached. And unlike the offer made by
Beijing, all of Saudi Arabia’s promised funding actually materialized.Beyond boosting the nation’s Islamic credentials,
Pakistan is looking to diversify its stock of superpower supporters. Although
China is said to be Pakistan’s “all-weather friend,” the precise meaning of
this friendship is elusive. Has China stood beside Pakistan in tough diplomatic
struggles? Not really. For example, it stood on the sidelines during the 1999
Kargil crisis. Does China bail Pakistan out of economic hardship? Perhaps it
will in the future (if President Xi
makes good on recent promises), but it has not often done so in the
past. Did China actively support Pakistan during its three wars with India in
1948, 1965, and 1971? No, no, and no. United States, meanwhile, is
Pakistan’s—well, nobody is quite sure what. Friend? Enemy? Both? Neither? Even
if Pakistan is not going to walk away from either of its two traditional
patrons, it is pleased to have Saudi Arabia as a third. Just last year, for
example, Riyadh helped Islamabad stave off a financial crisis with a $1.5 billion
soft loan. Unlike the assistance provided by Washington, Saudi
Arabia’s infusion came with no strings attached. And unlike the offer made by
Beijing, all of Saudi Arabia’s promised funding actually materialized.
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