By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
Islamabad is reportedly part of the new alliance. What might that mean?
According to recent reports, Pakistan is now part of a Saudi Arabia-led Islamic military alliance of 34 countries fighting terrorism in the Muslim world. Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah confirmed this on Thursday, December 17, telling reporters, “Yes, we’re part of it.” Saudi Arabia announced the anti-terror alliance on Tuesday.
This news comes after initial confusion regarding the purpose and extent of this alliance, including in Pakistan itself. On Wednesday, just one day before Pakistan declared it was part of the Saudi alliance, its officials said otherwise, declaring that they had not been consulted by anyone in Saudi Arabia. Aizaz Chaudhry, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, told reporters on December 16 that he had asked his ambassador in Riyadh to discover how the “error” was made. By the next day however, these two diverging narratives were reconciled, with Khalilullah denying that Pakistan was “surprised” about its inclusion in the alliance, and insisting that Chaudhry had earlier “only said that Pakistan was ‘ascertaining details’ about the announcement.”
One possible explanation is that Pakistan genuinely did not know it was part of the Saudi-led alliance but changed its position to save face and shore up its ties with Saudi Arabia. The two countries are close, and it would seriously undermine the alliance in its infancy if Pakistan did not sign up. Additionally, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia both confirmed that they had been exchanging ideas on how to deal with terrorism prior to the announcement. It is also possible that the delay in Pakistan’s confirmation of membership was a function of internal debates in that country about joining the alliance, with the military establishment being more in favor than the civilian government, despite Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s close ties with Saudi Arabia. It is in fact quite possible that the confusion was due to the fact that the military took the decision to cooperate with Saudi Arabia without consulting with Pakistan’s civilian government. Pakistan’s military has never really ceded control over the country’s foreign and defense policies to the civilian government.
Read the full story at The Diplomat