Saudi’s new riyal-politics

What price is Pakistan willing to pay?

A new chess game has just begun in Saudi Arabia, one that will move pieces across the geopolitical board of Middle East and South Asia. Its elevated interest in Pakistan is central to what seems its new strategy, but its reasons lie elsewhere. The world has changed, especially after the Arab Spring, and so must Saudi.

The change began when the Spring rolled into Syria. The Saudis had reason to be happy. Gaddafi had just been removed, and their al Qaeda proxies had proved significant. They also set a new precedent; on ground Salafi militias complemented NATO air raids (a marked departure from Afghanistan and Iraq), and a four-decade regime had folded in six months. They were also quick to convince regional Sunni regimes of the inevitability of Bashar’s collapse. The Jordanians were never best friends with Syria’s Baathists, but Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan turned strongly on his old friend Bashar, and the Saudi-GCC-Turkey noose seemed closing around Damascus.

But Bashar, backed by Russia and Iran, dug in his heels, and the longer the war lingered the more Saudi role of funding and arming al Qaeda like militants became obvious. Bandar bin Sultan, Riyadh’s long time US ambassador and former intelligence chief, was given the Syria dossier – a clear indication to those familiar with Saudi riyal-politics that the old mix of petrodollars and Salafi training camps would soon litter the theatre of war.

For a while Saudi policy came in sync with Israel’s, and long time Middle East watchers, especially foreign correspondents, began noting a convergence of interests. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis, which formed the principal anti Israel resistance, was also the regional Saudi-GCC arch rival. Iran’s quest for the bomb was equally disturbing to both, as was its support of Hezbollah, and the transit route through large Syrian territory. This was why even into the third year of the civil war, the US continued to allow blatant Saudi support for extremist outfits openly operating in Syria.

A tipping point came when rebels overran the Golan checkpoint at the Israeli border last summer, and immediately began mortar fire across the Yahood frontier. The Israelis were about to undertake their first cross-border raid since the ’73 Yom Kippur war when a Syrian government air-raid retook the border post. From then on, not only were the proxies straining at the leash a continuous problem with Washington, but increasing accounts of mass killings, beheadings, and outright genocide against minority Shia and Alawis became impossible to justify.

Around this time Bandar bin Sultan is also reported to have visited Moscow. Putin was invited to dump Assad. Russia could keep the warm water port at Tartus in the new setup, and its lucrative arms deals would remain, only the cheques would come from Riyadh instead of Damascus. Bandar also (reportedly) threw in a sweetner. Russia’s Chechen problems, the prince implied, could be turned off “like a switch”. He had the power to do it. That Putin subsequently criticised western leaders for supporting terrorists “who eat human organs” and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov publically rebuked John Kerry for defending militants in the name of democracy implies Putin probably rejected Bandar’s offer.

But the line was clearly crossed when it became clear that the chemical weapons outcry, when opposition groups accused the Syrian government of using banned gas, was also false, and meant to trick US-EU participation in the war. It later emerged, with Russian intelligence help, that cluster shells carrying the gas came from a batch Moscow sold, years earlier, to Gaddafi’s Tripoli. And these were among thousands of tons of weapons missing from ammo dumps after Saudi funded militias ran loose.

With Saudis sidelined and one confirmed and another possible nuclear power not far from it, even if Riyadh is not calling in rumoured favours, it definitely seeks services from Pakistan that go beyond traditional arms and trade deals.

The US suddenly went back on air strikes, and even began a measured thaw with Iran. More recently, according to a reliable Lebanese newspaper, the Obama administration warned the Saudis against supporting Syrian militant groups any longer, to the extent of threatening sanctions for sponsoring terrorism. That prompted a rare royal decree, the Saudi king himself announcing strict legal action and long jail terms for Saudi fighters going to Syria. Only when these terms were met did the White House confirm Obama’s Saudi tour later this spring.

But with the arrangement with America unraveling, the Saudis now need other avenues of safeguarding their interests in the region, especially if Iran might wriggle out of the sanctions chokehold and possibly even acquire the bomb in the long term. And this necessity has brought the foreign ministers and crown prince back to Pakistan. After all it was here that theirmadressa outreach programme was created, nurtured and perfected. Bandar bin Sultan had acted as King Fahad’s translator when CIA Director William Casey came to Jeddah to ask for Saudi petrodollars to support the Afghan jihad, and the king promised to match dollar-for-dollar. And as the billions were routed through Pakistan, they saw how easily their oil money could finance programmes which were repaid by deepening Saudi influence in the country. Pakistan’s army, seventh largest in the world, can also provide security to the Saudi state, especially its royals, something the Americans have done for decades.

Interestingly, journalist and scholar David Ottoway, author of Bandar’s biography The King’s Messenger, implied as far back as ’09, “…if Iran did become a nuclear power and threaten the kingdom, Pakistan could well become its principal defender rather than the US”.

But for Islamabad, this raises very difficult questions. Embracing the Saudi overture, which the prime minister has done, especially adopting Riyadh’s Syria position, casts doubts on his counterinsurgency (COIN) position. He has already weakened himself by supporting talks with militants even as they continue their war on the state. To support an active terrorist insurgency against another sovereign state, that too at the behest of a regressive power bloc losing significance in its own region, will harm Islamabad’s position in its own fight at home, and invite international condemnation.

On the surface the Saudi are coming for trade, investment, and arms deals. We will give the Saudis weapons and they will help our economy. But they don’t really need our JF-17 Thunder and Mushak trainer aircraft; they have already made far more significant purchases from western governments. And Crown Prince Salman did not come to sign trade agreements. There is talk of a possible nuclear transfer deal, obviously denied by the foreign office, but such chatter has persisted since long before the Islamic bomb, when Faisal, Bhutto and Gaddafi allegedly hatched the idea on the sidelines of the Paris arms exhibition in ’74, that one day the financing patrons might ask Islamabad for delivery.

With Saudis sidelined and one confirmed and another possible nuclear power not far from it, even if Riyadh is not calling in rumoured favours, it definitely seeks services from Pakistan that go beyond traditional arms and trade deals. And since Saudi assistance is never without its Salafi influence, which has already brought terrorism and war to the country, Pakistan must decide very carefully what price it is willing to pay to play riyal-politics.