- Pakistan’s thorny and unenviable options on IMCTC
It took two years since the Saudi-sponsored Islamic Military Alliance was first mooted in December 2015 for it to take concrete shape under a different nomenclature. The delay was possibly caused by the intensifying Yemen war and distracting 2017 Qatar blockade, which latter event highlighted divisions even within the Sunni section of the professed bloc, apart from the unprofitable political rivalry with sectarian overtones with Iran, as over Syria and Hezbollah. At one time this Islamic NATO seemed to be a stillborn notion, fated to fade away by intrinsic contradictions and geopolitical struggle for regional influence between Shia Iran, excluded from membership, and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi insecurity over the limited military capability of its soldiers, despite state of the art equipment on which billions of dollars have been squandered, so candidly exposed in the long-drawn Yemen war, has probably led it to resurrect the December 2015 initiative, but too high hopes cannot be pinned on the venture in its practical implementation and influence.
The revamped Islamic Military Counter–Terrorism Coalition is to hold its inaugural session in Riyadh on Sunday with the hardline Crown Prince addressing defence ministers of the 41-nations in attendance, largely comprising impoverished countries beholden for largesse to the kingdom. This constitutes the official launch of the organisation’s operations, which now encompasses four core concerns of ideology, communications, counter-terrorist financing and military. Pakistan’s former COAS General Raheel Sharif, appointed commander of the new bloc in April 2017, a controversial development for some, stressed integrating, uniting and coordinating these four key aspects to better tackle terrorism and extremism ‘in all its forms’.
Pakistani policy makers are squeezed between the clichéd rock and hard place, considering the Iranian exclusion, ever-increasing hostility with the Saudis and Tehran’s suspicions about the coalition’s true intent. The IMCTC objectives must be thoroughly debated in parliament in a transparent manner, at public forums and in the media, before a final decision is taken, with the country’s overriding national interests the foremost priority. As the Islamic world’s second largest and only nuclear state, Pakistan’s responsible role should be that of conciliator and honest broker, based on principled realism.
