Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, not his army, the world’s most dangerous
Kamal AlamSunday 12 April 2015 17:07
No
country has had more written about its army in the past decade than
Pakistan. Every three years, there is more global speculation about who
will be Pakistan Army Chief than there is on the appointment of the
head of the US military.
It
is no mystery, since Pakistan’s military commands the strongest air
force in the Islamic world and has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. The
country has been dubbed the world’s most dangerous country by at least
three magazines – Newsweek, the Economist and Time. Yet few analysts
look beyond the simplistic nature of this discourse: the true danger
that Pakistan poses comes in the shape of its current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.
In
the past few weeks, Sharif has mobilised the right-wing sectarian
groups Jamaat Ud Dawa (JUD) and Ahlah Sunna wa Jamaat (ASWJ), two
militant outfits that were born out of the Afghan-Arab groups during the
Afghan civil war in the 1980s. Both these parties have links to terrorist groups that have killed Sunni and Shiite alike. They are putting heavy pressure on the Pakistani media and army for troops to be sent to fight in Yemen and beyond.
What
is even more disturbing is that lies are being spun in the Pakistan
media insinuating that the Houthis have already attacked Saudi soil,
thus suggesting that the battle in Yemen has become a holy war incumbent
on Pakistan. There is nothing holy about Saudi Arabia to begin with,
yet often under Sharif’s premiership efforts are made to convince the
illiterate masses of Pakistan that Saudi Arabia is synonymous with Islam
and thus Pakistan’s creation.
Pakistan suffers from multiple identity issues and ethnic wars between the Pashtun, the Punjabi and the Baluch;
only Islam unites the country, as it was created for the Muslims of the
subcontinent, and its media see Pakistan’s powerful army as the
protector of Saudi Arabia.
Under
Sharif’s direction a strong narrative has been built of equating the
House of Saud to an infallible ordained family that protects Islam, and
thus Pakistan, as the most powerful Muslim army, must protect the
al-Sauds.
However, if you talk to Western defence chiefs and long-term CIA
experts they are quick to caution against the oft-repeated narrative of
“Islamic” generals at the helm of nuclear weapons and commanding an
array of militant groups rivaled only by the groups in Iraq and Syria.
Aside from the Western narrative on Pakistan, there is also an Arab narrative:
Pakistan is now the only Muslim country to possess nuclear weapons; it
has also previously been a full participant in the wars against Israel
in 1967 and 1973.
Furthermore, its pilots have shot down
Israeli planes, and have also taken part in Arab civil wars, most
notably in the 1970 overthrow of the PLO during Black September in
Jordan and during previous Saudi-Yemen skirmishes when its pilots were
in the cockpits of Saudi jets.
The
latest skirmish in Yemen, though, sheds new light on the increasing
sectarian divide in the Pakistani political and military leadership.
Pakistan’s military has always prided itself on its professional ethos
and the non-sectarian nature of its general officer corps, but, since
the nuclear tests in 1998, it has pulled ever closer to the Saudi
leadership.
The
prime minister during that earlier period was Nawaz Sharif. Since
coming to power for a third time almost two years ago, Sharif has made a
dizzying number of visits to Riyadh, and similarly there is a revolving door of top-tier Saudi princes in and out of Islamabad on a weekly basis.
It is no secret that the Saudis see Pakistan as very much in their sphere of influence. The Saudis have boasted that they are not just influential in Pakistani politics and security affairs, but they are active
participants. Furthermore, the Saudis have always seen former president
Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistan Peoples Party, which he co-chairs and
whose leadership is predominantly Shiite, as “rotten”. The PPP was
created by the leading Shiite feudal family, the Bhuttos from Sindh, and
is seen as heretical as far as Saudis are concerned.
Every
time Sharif has come to power, he has had a run-in with the Pakistan
military leadership and has interfered in the promotion processes of the
Army Board, the military body that oversees the elevation of military
officers. There has been much speculation of Saudi Arabia’s role in the
promotion ladder of Pakistan’s army with the help of Sharif’s
premiership.
Sharif’s credentials as a supporter of the Taliban have also been an open secret, with active “ignorance” of the Punjabi Taliban. The
south of Punjab is where most of the Saudi funding ties in with the
most extreme groups that have been linked to the violence in Afghanistan
and even Iraq and Syria. The Saud family own thousands of acres in
southern Punjab, which are used for their food security and hunting
grounds for falcons.
An increasing sectarian rift in Pakistan has been seen since Sharif’s latest return to power in 2013, with attacks
on the Shiite community reaching a new high in the past 12 months. The
government has looked away at the plight of these communities in
comparison to attacks on army schools and charities.
Similarly, on the issue of the Syria war, Sharif’s extreme Wahabi nature has shown its true colours (his father reportedly followed a Salafist
group, Ahl al-Hadith, which rejects claims it is synonymous with
Wahabism). Sharif has seen the Syrian war as a Shiite-Sunni war despite
most of the Syrian Arab Army officer corps being Sunni, Christian and
Druze, yet Sharif, pressured by the Saudis, has falsely told the
Pakistani political leadership that the war in Syria is an assault on
Sunnis
Syria and Pakistan have always been strong military allies with deep counter-intelligence ties. Pakistan
has historically been one of the largest trainers of the Syrian Air
Force, and also regular annual military exchange of officers and equipment
sold to the Syrians. Yet this five-decade-old historic relation was put
aside when, under heavy Saudi pressure, Sharif called for the Syrian
government to step aside as it had lost credibility.
This
shift in a historic stance towards Syria came about through direct
pressure from the then-Saudi Crown, and now ruler, Prince Salman. Sharif
has also had strong relationships with the Hariri family in Lebanon,
and used the “old-school” Afghan-Arab jihadi network to facilitate Sunni groups in Lebanon to take on Hezbollah.
The
most disturbing element of the Sharif-Saudi alliance in Lebanon has
been the arming of the Wahabi groups in Nahr al-Bared and Ain al-Hilweh
Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which turned into an all-out skirmish in 2008-2009.
The
present conflict in Yemen has the potential to turning Sharif’s
sectarian objectives from being covert to overt. That he has always been
close to the Saudis has never been in doubt to seasoned Pakistan
watchers. But the growing bravado with which the Saudis lord it over
Pakistan has the potential to further exasperate the region’s problems
as most of the Gulf Cooperation Council looks to Pakistan to provide
security to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and increasingly also Qatar.
Pakistan took full part in the suppression of the popular uprising in Bahrain in 2011,
and Pakistani Sunni families have been given Bahraini passports to
settle in Bahrain with a strong bias towards military and security as a
background prerequisite to get this citizenship.
All
the opposition parties in Pakistan have come out against Sharif’s
support for the Saudi’s in the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia without
doubt sees as its own Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and Riyadh’s increasing
involvement in all aspects of Pakistan’s foreign policy means that the
worst fears of international observers may not be sensationalist as some
thought previously.
Perhaps
the most telling sign of Pakistan’s full participation in Saudi
Arabia’s sectarian wars has been the “official” announcement by the
Saudis on 30 March that Pakistan has agreed to be part of the coalition against the Houthi militants. This decision was taken even before the Pakistani parliament or defence committees had met to discuss the motion.
Moreover the announcement came
from Saudi sources rather than Pakistani. (After days of debate,
Pakistan’s parliament has now decided against military involvement in
the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi militants.)
The
Pakistan-Saudi relationship has begun to resemble that of a puppet and
its master. Iran is extremely cautious about Pakistan’s growing tilt
towards playing Saudi Arabia’s dirty games in the Middle East, from
Lebanon and Syria on towards Bahrain and Yemen. Yet, Pakistan’s prime
minister looks set to take his nuclear-armed state into a full
involvement in Arab conflicts.
- Kamal Alam specialises
in contemporary military history of the Arab world, he is a Fellow for
Syrian Affairs at The Institute for Statecraft, and is a visiting
lecturer at several military staff colleges across the Middle East and
UK.
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