Treading a knife edge

Pakistan makes itself ‘relevant’ in an unexpected scenario

It was a foregone conclusion that Iranians fed up with the clerical regime led by Khamanei would be more than willing to uproot his regime, once the control from above was gone. Whether it was apparently done to bring in democracy in Iran, or get rid of the ‘suspicious’ nuclear programme; the end result was not what was expected.

A society wary of a dictatorship shows signs of relief, if such events take place. Whether it was the Poland of 1989, when the people took no time capturing the government institutions, or Baghdad of April 2003, when the signs of Baathist government calling it a day were soon detected and followed by Iraqis helping the US forces in dismantling the statues of Saddam Hussain, it was nothing like that in Tehran.

If the typical stubbornness of the warring parties, the USA and Iran, on the basis of mutual mistrust, opens the gates of hell (read war), any mistimed military event in the Arabian Peninsula will put the Pakistani state in a dire strait of action or inaction, with few options of diplomatic exit, in the Urdu metaphor patli gali se nikalna  ( getting out by a narrow street, or a way out of the quagmire)

In a city like Tehran, many people must have known in the early hours after the bombing of ‘Bayat Rahbari’ that Khamenei was no more. But the failure of the Iranians to rise up and even riot meant they were not opposed to the slain man, rather shocked to the core. If the Twitter feeds are to be believed, it is almost more than 50 days that the people supporting the clerical system had daily night vigils in the main squares of not just Tehran, but almost all the major cities of Iran.

A project, which was supposed to terminate with a regime change in Tehran, proved to be a failed one, presenting the project planners; the US President and IDF, with the problem of  looking for a way to live with the reality called the clerical regime in Iran. That will not mean that there was a change of heart overnight; not at all, the aggressing entities might still be looking for the prospect of the physical removal of the regime at some later date. However, that situation did create an environment, where all the regional players, aggressive, dormant or the ones trying to balance out the warring partners had to decide how to make up for the time forward.

For the USA, it is a scenario of living with the enemy called Iran. For the IDF, it is a bitter reality that Iran ruled by revolutionaries is still around the corner. They fear that even the reformists, looking for the removal of sanctions, will do the first thing, when the assets are restored, invest in the missile programme or on the defence budget. For the GCC states and especially Saudi Arabia, it is a massive adjustment, of how to live again with the Iranian system. 

For the apparently neutral players, it is also a catch-22 situation. They are torn between their economic, strategic and national interests as defined by the civil-cum-military bureaucracy and geography; whose first dictum is that neighborhoods cannot be traded, they remain what they are. It has been a fact that a Sunni faith professing Babar had to depend upon the Shia Shah Ismail Safavi for his Indian campaign and not the Turkish Ottomans, who professed the same belief system as his. It was pure geography which dictated his preferences and vice versa. Replicating the centuries old scenarios to the current day; Pakistan cannot ignore Iran at its borders, even if it wants to.

Apparently, the characteristics of a nation state defined in the above paragraph appertain to Pakistan. Pakistan since its inception has been the cornerstone of the US backed geostrategic planning, whether it was in the form of CENTO or SEATO. It was despite the fact that the then dictator Ayub Khan still had the guts to reject Pakistani forces’ participation in the Vietnam War, where the Johnson Administration wanted Pakistan to dig in. The Pakistani role in those alliances during the later years, even during the left-wing government of ZAB, was such that despite his left-wing rhetoric, Pakistan remained an active partner in these military alliances, drawing the wrath of the Indian Foreign Minister over ‘Mid-Link” Air Force exercises in November 1974. 

Pakistan was the lynchpin in the US-led Jihad enterprise during the Afghan War, whose after-effects Pakistan is still reeling from. That active role was again revived during the Musharraf years. After the return of civilian rule in 2008, that role has diminished from active participation, though there seems to be an unwritten presumption that Pakistan is to faithfully follow the USA, even if other states, equally in the US orbit, like Turkiye or even Iraq, can take exception. One of the most apparent expressions has been the Pakistani state's failure to cope with the natural gas shortage by developing the Pakistani end of the proposed gas pipeline from Iran. While the Iraqi and Turkish households since the post-2003 period have been depending upon the Iranian natural gas, Pakistan has faithfully followed the US dictates on that count.

Fast forward to the war among Iran, the USA and Israel. It goes without saying that while the streets in the Muslim world were with the slain Iranian leader Khamenei, his posters filling the commercial districts of many Muslim capitals, without any efforts by the government to dismantle them, the governments on the basis of their own expediencies were forced to tread a very cautious path.

In that context Pakistan has been no exception; however, its internal contradictions, especially the system of the government and its economic dire straits made it a case where the abovementioned treading a very narrow path was not a choice but an imperative. Pakistan has been caught up with the IMF for many decades; the recessionary cycle in vogue since the last decade or so, due to a variety of internal issues has forced the system to take decisions where the economic decisions have been tied to the strategic ones. During the last few days, Pakistan has been the recipient of funds from Saudi Arabia, with which it hopes to solve its foreign exchange problems in the coming months.

The price for that funds transfer has been the geostrategic pact Saudi Arabia and Pakistan penned last year; where attack on any of the two states; namely Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will be considered an attack on the other and the corresponding forces will be compelled to respond. After much delays, due to the Pakistani reluctance to balance out between many factors, now Pakistan has sent a squadron of its latest jets as well as troops to Saudi Arabia, even as a symbolic token in return for the financial benefits accrued.

Though at the point of time, the hostilities in the region have subsided, there can always be a chance of escalation courtesy the erratic theatrics of the US President. Given the fact that Pakistan is intimately tied to the Pentagon and is tied to a military pact with Saudi Arabia, an early resolution of the Iran-US conflict is an imperative for the Pakistani establishment one way or another. 

In case of any renewed hostilities and the bad blood between Tehran and Riyadh, Islamabad is caught between the devil and the deep sea, a situation it cannot avoid. Towards that end, the over-enthusiastic peace-making posture is not just meant for a good image of the country. Practically it is the only way Pakistan can plan avoiding a conflict or a battlefield it cannot afford to enter in either the short or long terms.

The simultaneous air dashes to the important regional capitals by the civil and the military establishments speaks of the dire situation and the equally dire choices Pakistan is faced with. Towards that end, it will be an important observation, how in the coming days, the regional countries take over the peace theatre and deescalate in a manner where the western intervention becomes meaningless. Towards that end the diplomatic posturing by Pakistan will be an important variable to look out for in the coming days. 

If the typical stubbornness of the warring parties, the USA and Iran, on the basis of mutual mistrust, opens the gates of hell (read war), any mistimed military event in the Arabian Peninsula will put the Pakistani state in a dire strait of action or inaction, with few options of diplomatic exit, in the Urdu metaphor patli gali se nikalna  ( getting out by a narrow street, or a way out of the quagmire).