Turkish Invasion Intensifies Culture War in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Cultural invasion of Pakistan is in full swing with Turkish schools and soap operas finding broad acceptance across the country. Local TV channels are airing soap operas dubbed in Urdu and Gülen movement is operating over a dozen schools in different parts of the country.

Turkish Entertainment: 

Since last summer,  channel Urdu1 has enjoyed top TV ratings with its multiple daily airings of the Turkish soap opera Ishq-e-Mamnu, or “Forbidden Love", according to the New York Times. Afraid of being left behind, Geo Entertainment, part of Pakistan's biggest media empire spawned by recent media revolution in the country, has joined the bandwagon with its prime-time airing of  Noor. It's a rags to riches story of a woman, and her adoring husband,
played by the blue-eyed former model Kivanc
Tatlitug.

Ishq-e-Mamnoon Cast Members

While the soaps depict a western lifestyle and deal with subjects that are considered taboo in Pakistan, they include characters with Muslim names which many Pakistanis can identify with. 

This latest trend contrasts sharply with what has been happening in the country for several decades.  Since 1980s, Pakistan's cultural transformation has been led, in part, by Pakistani workers traveling to and returning from Arab countries. These workers have brought with them Arab notions of Islamic piety and hard-line Wahabi beliefs to Pakistan. This phenomenon has contributed to the proliferation of radical madrassas funded by Saudi money in many parts of the country.

Arabs, seen as model Muslims by many Pakistanis, are themselves soaking up Turkish culture. Back in 2008, Saudi-owned Middle East
Broadcasting Centre (MBC) bought Noor and broadcast it across the Arab world to win its hearts and minds. Now Turkish shows are dominating the Arab airwaves. Even Greece, traditional rival of Turkey, has become so hospitable to Turkish soaps that they "are gaining a worshipful following in Greece", according to Mary Andreou who writes for the Greek newspaper Adesmeftos Typos.

Magnificent Century – Turkey’s most popular and most
talked-about but controversial soap is about the lavish lifestyle of Suleiman The Magnificent who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566 at the height of its glory and is still revered as Kanuni, or Lawgiver. His empire included large parts of Eastern and Central Europe and the entire Middle East. It is
watched in 43 countries by 200 million people, according to David Rohde
in The Atlantic. The Hurriyet reports that Turkish soap opera
exports have grown from US$1 million in 2007 to nearly US$100 million
today. Around a hundred different Turkish serials are exported in dubbed
or subtitled form to North Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, Asia,
and Latin America.

Turkish Education:

In Pakistan, Turkish presence extends beyond television entertainment; there's a network of Turkish schools being operated by Gülen Movement, a transnational religious, social, and possibly political movement led by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. It's been described by  New York Times as  coming "from a tradition of Sufism, an introspective, mystical strain of Islam". Currently, Gulen Pakistan is operating 14 Pak-Turk schools serving over 3000 students in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Khairpur, Multan, Peshawar and Quetta.

Pak-Turk School, Jamshoro, Pakistan

 In a CBS 60 Minutes segment last year, here's how correspondent Leslie Stahl described Gulen schools in the United States: "Over the past decade scores of charter schools have popped up all over
the U.S., all sharing some common features. Most of them are
high-achieving academically, they stress math and science, and one more
thing: they're founded and largely run by immigrants from Turkey who are
carrying out the teachings of a Turkish Islamic cleric: Fethullah
Gulen". CBS report said Gulen schools in the United States have 20,000 students enrolled with 30,000 more on waiting list. The growing popularity of Turkish charter schools has drawn suspicion and criticism of various groups in the United States.

Critics:

Growing Turkish influence in Pakistan has its critics. Local actors and producers decry the new competition of Turkish soaps for "destroying our society".  Others see as part of the American conspiracy. Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey, was warned by a mosque near where he works never to return wearing a tie, according to a news report.

Future: 

Today's Turkey is a modern democratic and secular state run by moderate Islamists. It is seen by many Muslims, including Pakistani Muslims, as a model pluralist society that offers many lessons for the rest of the Islamic world.  But it has many detractors as well. For example, there is significant resistance to growing Turkish cultural and educational influence in Pakistan.  The Turkish influence is still small but rising rapidly, and the resistance from entrenched orthodoxy is increasing with it. It does offer hope as an anti-dote to the  radical Saudi influence that is at least partly responsible for growing violence in Pakistan. While I do see signs of hope with the emergence of Turkey as model for Pakistan and other Muslim countries, only time will tell as to how this culture war unfolds to shape Pakistan's future. 

Here's a video clip of Ishq-e-Mamnoon:

Ishq E Mamnoon OST Title Song Full 720p HQ from Prince Mughal on Vimeo.


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Turkey, Pakistan and Secularism

Pakistan Media Revolution

Violent Social Revolution in Pakistan

Clash of Ideas in Islam

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

 Silent Social Revolution in Pakistan

The Eclipse of Feudalism in Pakistan

Social and Structural Transformations in Pakistan

Malala Moment: Profiles in Courage-Not!

Urbanization in Pakistan Highest in South Asia

Rising Economic Mobility in Pakistan

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an excerpt of Pervez Hoodbhoy's Op Ed on popes and caliphs as published in Express Tribune:

A consensus at electing popes hasn’t always been that easy. History: Pope Gregory X established the Papal Conclave in 1274 after it took the cardinals nearly three years to choose him as the successor to Pope Clement IV. Locking the cardinals in a meeting and gradually decreasing their food rations was seen as good way to expedite agreement on a new pope. Three voting cardinals died during the process. Such is life.

What enables the quick consensus on electing popes in modern times? Simple: the pope’s role has become largely ceremonial since 1536. No head of state need obey his orders. For Catholics, he is an icon of piety and chastity standing above the sordid politics of the world. While they are expected to live and breed according to the dictates of the Church, they do not consider them to be infallible any more. Today, increasing numbers of Catholics are moving away from the Church because of its stand on birth control and divorce. Nevertheless, though with much lessened powers, the new pope speaks for 1.2 billion Catholics.

Who should speak for the 1.5 billion Muslims today? This question is difficult because the Islamic world has been without a caliph ever since Kemal Ataturk eliminated the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Earlier, a caliphate had been the norm. Today, several Muslim groups are marketing the idea that restoring ancient glories is contingent upon reviving the caliphate. But this is a prescription for fratricidal conflict.

The problem is that the caliph is generally understood to be both the spiritual as well as temporal leader. The Egyptian scholar, Taha Hussein, was unusual in suggesting that Islam permits the two aspects to be separated. This strongly conflicts with the views of Maulana Abul Ala Maududi or Sayyid Qutb and those who have been influenced by them. In 2001, Osama bin Laden called upon Muslims to “establish the righteous caliphate of our ummah”, a man who would lead and organise the ummah. A Sunni, he would enforce a single Sharia. The bewilderingly many extant sects and schools of thought would have to vanish, either by persuasion or by coercion. Since Shias obviously cannot be persuaded, they (and others) would have to be subdued.

More significantly, the caliph would be the commander-in-chief of all Muslim forces belonging to an Islamic superstate that would supercede the authority of Muslim national states. He would authorise jihad, both defensive and offensive, in forms ranging from actual combat to space wars, cyber jihad, economic sanctions, oil boycotts, making treaties, and dealing with the World Bank and the IMF. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be at the caliph’s command. So would oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf. If any Muslim country defied his orders, waging war would be an option.
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Today, a global caliphate can only be created through violence. The Hizbut Tahrir, which seeks this goal, sees mutinies and insurrections as the solution. Its website calls upon Pakistan’s armed forces to rise against its leadership. Brigadier Ali Khan and his colleagues will surely not be the last officers convicted of sedition.

It is a hard enough question, answerable only by God, to judge who is truly a pious Christian or Muslim. But when the power to make war also depends on the answer, it becomes impossibly difficult. So, the 13th century cardinals locked up by Pope Gregory X would have starved to death rather than arrive at an agreement! Attempting to elect a caliph today would pit Muslim against Muslim in bloody conflict. Although there is zero chance of the caliphate’s revival, this goal nevertheless looms large in the consciousness of those committed to seizing state power and to fundamentally transforming the societies they take over.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/524854/on-choosing-popes-and-caliphs/

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a news story of Saudi culture in action:

A Saudi Arabia Airlines flight from Jeddah to the eastern city of Dammam was delayed over a passenger's demand that a stewardess be removed from the aircraft because she wasn't accompanied by a male guardian, Okaz newspaper reported.

Flight 1108 was delayed when a stewardess began to read out and demonstrate flight safety procedures was interrupted by a passenger who asked her "why are you on the plane without a guardian?" the newspaper reported.

The passenger then proceeded to demand the plane not take off until all women unaccompanied by male guardians be removed from the aircraft.

The captain called security who then forcefully removed the objecting passenger and his son and started an investigation, according to the newspaper. The incident caused the flight to be delayed two hours.

Every woman in Saudi Arabia must have a male guardian accompanying her when travelling, usually a husband or father, sometimes a son. Women in the kingdom need the consent of a male guardian to work, travel abroad, marry or to open a bank account.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who has tried to accelerate the pace of reform in the kingdom, announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote and run in municipal elections starting in 2015.

Last month, the monarch appointed 30 women to the 150-member Shoura Council which was previously an all male body that advises the government on legislation.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/saudi-flight-delayed-over-stewardess...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a Time Magazine article on Hollywood bending to get Chinese business:

We already knew some filming of Iron Man 3 took place in China, and that the movie has a Chinese co-distributor and that Chinese actor Wang Xueqi has a role — but, as of late last week, Chinese Iron Man fans have another reason to feel special: they’re getting their very own version of the movie.

(MORE: Licence to Cut as Skyfall Censored in China)

After the May 3 release of the Marvel tentpole, another edition will be released in China and will be marketed and distributed by Chinese distribution company DMG Entertainment. (DMG is listed as a co-producer for the film on IMDB, but this latest press release clarifies that, in China at least, the movie is a Marvel production distributed by DMG.) The announcement, available on Deadline, told fans that the Chinese version would include bonus footage:

The Chinese version of the film will also feature a special appearance of China’s top actress, Fan Bingbing, and will offer specially prepared bonus footage made exclusively for the Chinese audience. Marvel Studios’ experience working on this film with Fan Bingbing and Wang Xueqi and in shooting in China has been very positive and has created a springboard for future collaboration with China’s talented stars and its growing film and television industry.

DMG has experience with this kind of situation, as the Los Angeles Times points out: Looper also received financing from the company and had a Chinese version that showed more of Shanghai than U.S. audiences saw.

These little nods to the appetites of Chinese fans — or, in some cases, the potential future decisions of Chinese censors, as other movies have learned the hard way — may not seem like much. But studios must be betting that a few extra Chinese location shots or scenes with Chinese actors could pay off in a big way, and they’ve got reason to think it’s possible: analysts predict that China, currently the No. 2 box-office market in the world, will surpass the U.S. within the next decade.

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/01/iron-man-3-chinese-fans-wi...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/30/pakistans-answer-to-glee-will-address-homosexuality-and-extremism-in-song-of-course/">Washington Post</a> story on Taan, billed as Pakistan's answer to "Glee":

<i>Starting in September, Pakistani TV stations will begin broadcasting what some have called the country’s “answer to Glee”: an envelope-pushing musical drama called “Taan,” set in a fictional Lahore high school.
If a peppy musical about misfit teenagers and their social/sexual escapades seems out of place in Pakistan, that’s because it is. Interviews with director Samar Raza tend to focus on the way the show can grapple with those issues like sexuality and teen romance without provoking the ire of Pakistan’s media censors — the same people who warned TV media earlier this year not to promote Valentine’s Day and once took an entire cable network off the air after it broadcast a Salman Rushdie interview.
Raza told Agence France-Presse, for instance, that the show suggests a homosexual relationship through innuendo and conversation among the characters. (Homosexuality is illegal in Pakistan.) It will also tackle Pakistan’s religious and sectarian violence: One of the characters is described as an extremist who initially planned to blow the music school up — before getting into music, of course. Another main character is a Christian whose girl family was massacred in the 2009 riots at Gojra, an actual event that heightened interfaith tensions for weeks.
“Music is the only thing that can unite this country,” one of the show’s actors, Hassan Niazi, told The Telegraph. (The BBC also has some more behind-the-scenes interviews, and a few shots from the program, in this video.)
But it’s not as though Pakistan has shied away from controversy on TV. Pakistani dramas, often filmed in Lahore and modeled on Indian shows, have addressed child abuse, divorce and incest, Pakistani journalist Kamal Siddiqi told the Times of India for a feature on Pakistani TV last year. One of the country’s most popular domestic soaps, a family drama called “Humsafar,” revolved around a cast of willful women — and gave plenty of screentime to issues like divorce and mental illness.

Foreign imports from Turkey and India are also wildly popular in Pakistan. As the New York Times reported in January, the country’s most watched Turkish soap, appropriately titled “Forbidden Love,” follows the adventures of the rich and promiscuous as they fall in and out of love triangles and otherwise sordid relationships. (The video below, a slow-mo compilation of meaningful glances from the show, is absolutely worth watching.) Critics have slammed the show as vulgar and un-Islamic, but it’s still on-air....
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Taan will fortunately have no problems there: The show was filmed in Lahore, and its creators have licensed more than 100 classic Pakistani songs for the “Glee” treatment. Now Raza and his crew need only hope that their bold storylines receive the same kind of reception Glee, a rule-breaker in its own right, got in the U.S. According to Nielsen, he show raked in more than 8 million viewers during its last season.
</i>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/30/pakist...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a Dawn report on Pak-Turk school students placing second in an international contest:

Two students from Islamabad have bagged silver medal in the world finals of the International Computer Projects Competition held recently in Romania by giving solution to end loadshedding and resolve issue of energy theft.

Shahbaz Khattak and Abdul Muizz Lodhi of PakTurk School Islamabad have designed a GSM-based Automatic Meter Reader (AMR) which was presented in the Infomatrix Romania where their project won silver medal in the category of Hardware Control.

AMR can collect consumption data from power, gas and water meters without involvement of meter readers. It transmits data to central database of service providing company for billing, troubleshooting, and analysis.

AMR saves utility providers the expense of visiting every location to read a meter, its billing is based on actual consumption rather than estimates, past or predicted consumption.

Moreover timely information can help utility providers and customers’ better control usage and production.

It provides accurate data, track usage, improve energy management, detect tempering and cut operational costs by discouraging wastage to boost profit. It can be used for security and fire alarm systems.

Khattak and Lodhi said that metre reading will no more remain a time consuming and labour intensive manual process if gas, power and water utilities employ ARM which will also settle the issues of complaints by consumers and increasing energy theft presently estimated at Rs250 billion annually.

Also, some modification can enable power companies to switch off air conditioners and other home appliances drawing extreme amounts of energy remotely which will end the need of loadshedding in Pakistan where over 5000MW is consumed by A/Cs in summer, the students said.

Commenting on the development PakTurk officials Kamil Ture and Turgut Puyan said that participation in global competitions and winning prizes has become a regular feature for Pakistani students which reflect their talent.

Educational institutions should encourage young to apply their imagination, passion, and creativity to make a difference.

The competitions are not just about promoting professional excellence; it also serves to promote intercultural dialogue and cooperation, said Ture.

Hundreds of students from many countries including United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Russian Federation, Macedonia, Belgium, Romania, Poland, Hong Kong, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Vietnam, Hungary, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ecuador, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Laos, Colombia, Kenya, Albania, Iraq, and Malaysia participated in the event and presented projects covering a wide variety of topics.

http://dawn.com/2013/05/29/pak-students-find-new-solution-to-end-lo...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an AP report on Turkish TV in Pakistan:

The shows, which have taken Pakistan by storm over the last year, are attractive to local TV operators because they are much cheaper to buy than Pakistani dramas are to produce, and also feature more elaborate costumes and sets.

“It is a big challenge,” said Abid Ali, a veteran Pakistani TV star, while filming his latest show, Mere Apne, or My Loved Ones, in the southern city of Karachi. “Turkish shows have very expensive productions our industry can’t afford.”

The spartan set of Ali’s show, which chronicles the sad life of a young girl after her parents die, helped prove his point. The entire episode was filmed in the living room and driveway of a small rented house in an upscale area of Karachi. The actresses used the only bedroom on the ground floor to apply their makeup, and the kids who lived in the house were scolded for making too much noise while they were filming. Since there was only one camera, they had to shoot each scene three times from different angles.

One of the most popular Turkish shows in Pakistan right now is Mera Sultan, or My Sultan, a period drama about the powerful Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent. The show is no Game of Thrones, but it does feature ornate Ottoman-style sets, scenes with horses and archery and beautifully designed costumes.

“There are multiple reasons behind the success of Turkish drama serials,” said Athar Waqar Azeem, a senior vice president at Hum TV, one of Pakistan’s leading entertainment channels. “Freshness, better and beautiful locations and new faces attract Pakistanis.”

One episode of a Turkish drama costs a Pakistani TV station about $2,500 to broadcast, while the production of a Pakistani show can be four times that amount, Azeem said.

The popularity of the Turkish shows has sparked concern from Pakistani politicians. The Senate committee responsible for information and broadcasting said at the end of last year that it was worried the shows would harm Pakistan’s TV industry and featured content that ran counter to local cultural norms.

Pakistani TV star Javeria Abbasi, who co-stars with Ali in Mere Apne, agreed, saying “if a Pakistani actress wears a miniskirt, nobody accepts it, but Turkish actresses are gaining popularity in these costumes.”
---
The popularity of Turkish shows in Pakistan has benefited at least one group in the media industry: voice-over artists who translate the dramas from Turkish into Urdu. The pay isn’t great — $20 to $40 per episode, which takes about eight hours to dub — but it’s enough to make a living.

“For the first time in the history of the voice-over industry, there is enough work for an artist because of Urdu dubbing of Turkish serials and soaps,” said Tasleem Ansari, a veteran voice-over artist, who was working out of a cheap apartment in Karachi. “Before this trend, voice-over artists could only perform in commercials.”

Ansari said she wasn’t persuaded by those who argue that the Turkish shows threatened Pakistani cultural norms.

“Local actresses and models also wear miniskirts on television programs and at award functions,” Ansari said. “I agree that these costumes do not match Pakistani culture, but Turkish drama is all about Turkish culture, and people like it and have accepted it.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/some-in-pakistan-th...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an AlJazeera report on split between Erdogan's AKP and the Gulen movement:

The Gulen movement backed the AKP in its 11-year rule up until recently. Today's bitter row that has escalated gradually in the last couple of years is another serious test for the AKP, following last summer's country-wide anti-government protests, and ahead of a series of elections starting in March 2014.

Analysts say that the tensions between the movement and the government stem from a variety of factors, with the two sides falling apart on several foreign policy issues and Turkey's Kurdish question.

Sources close to Gulen say that the "first crack" in the AKP-Gulen alliance was the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010 when Israeli troops attacked a flotilla boat heading from Turkey to Gaza, killing eight Turkish and one American activist. Relations between the two countries still remain in crisis.

"[Gulen's followers] never approved the role the government tried to attain in the Middle East, or approved of its policy in Syria, which made everything worse, or its attitude in the Mavi Marmara crisis with Israel," Ali Bulac, a conservative writer who supports Gulen, recently told The New York Times.

Mahcupyan told Al Jazeera that that there was an "apparent" difference between the sides in their approach to the Kurdish issue, specifically on the direct talks the Turkish intelligence has been holding with Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

"The government believes that direct talks with Ocalan and the PKK are the way forward for a settlement. In contrast, the Gulen movement is against addressing the PKK directly, but it does not oppose giving [Turkey's Kurds] their cultural rights," Mahcupyan says.

PKK is an outlawed Kurdish armed group that has been fighting against Turkey for around 30 years. Its demands gradually transformed from Kurdish independence to autonomy and, now, to a fully democratised Turkey for all.

Mahcupyan notes that members of the Gulen movement tackled the PKK in southeastern Turkey for years and its followers in the judiciary carried out the cases against the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan in Kurdish or KCK), the alleged umbrella organisation of the PKK along with other Kurdish groups in the wider region.

Gradual poisoning of relations

There were also a series of incidents that apparently poisoned the relations and ended up with two sides burning bridges.

In February 2012, a prosecutor called in five active and former senior intelligence officers, including Hakan Fidan, the undersecretary who heads the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), for interrogation as "suspects". They were asked to respond to charges that they had illegal contact with the PKK, referring to a series of talks between them and several senior PKK members in the Norwegian capital of Oslo among other charges.

It was even a complaint, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, that the Gulen...

http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2013122473646994231

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an NPR piece on Turkish politics:

Turkey is in a political mess right now, and its government is beset by a corruption scandal.

Critics have long accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AK party of acting in authoritarian ways in a quest to turn Turkey into an Islamic state. For his part, Erdogan says those critics are part of a plot against him.

Elif Shafak, a Turkish author who divides her time between London and Istanbul, says Turkey these days is polarized almost beyond repair. And it makes the political squabbles in the US look relatively minor.

"When politics is polarized in America, it does not affect the system on every level because, at the end of the day, it is a well-established democracy," Shafak says. "So it doesn't affect the media, the judiciary, the institutions, and therefore individual citizens the way it affects people in Turkey."

Part of the problem is what Shafak calls the "baba complex." The baba complex is a "general attitude, not only in politics, but in almost every area of life in Turkey. We see the quest for the baba — baba is the patriarch, baba is a strong male personality — to save us," she says. "And I find that quite undemocratic, in its essence."

She says Turkey is a country that has been modernized and westernized from the top down, by the elites. But for a true democracy, she believes, there needs to be a real bottom up, grassroots kind of democracy — essentially, by the people, for the people.

Some in the West think that Islam is the problem hurting the country's democracy. Shafak says that's absolutely not the case.

"I do not agree that Islam is incompatible with western democracy ... We have to focus on the system, the structure," she says. "For me, the main problem in Turkey is authoritarianism. And authoritarianism is not something that solely comes from the conservatives. Turkey is not a typical authoritarian regime, but clearly it is not a mature democracy either; it is somewhere in between."

She says the unfortunate reality is that politicians play on the supposed clash of civilizations between Turkey and Europe, and the West as a whole.

"Hardliners everywhere are breeding hardliners elsewhere," she says. "So in other words, anti-western sentiments throughout the Middle East are creating Islamophobia in Europe. Islamophobia in Europe or the Western world are creating more anti-Western sentiments elsewhere. These things go hand in hand.

"Hardliners, or fundamentalists of all religions, should be best friends because they see the world in exactly the same black and white terms," Shafak says.

She believes Turkey can pull out from its political chaos, "but the only path forward is a much more liberal, inclusive constitution."

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-17/you-think-american-politics-m...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a Japan Times story on Saudi quest for military help from Pakistan:

The Saudi rulers view Pakistan as one of three regional powers, along with Iran and Turkey, capable of having a decisive impact on the Middle East. An alliance with Shiite Iran — the kingdom’s supreme ideological enemy, and one with regional hegemonic ambitions — is out of the question. Turkey, for its part, is regarded as a competitor for the mantle of Sunni Muslim leadership — a position long held by the Ottoman Empire.

The frequent description of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as harboring “neo-Ottoman” ambitions for his country clearly implicates this rivalry. It was the Ottomans who brought down two historical Saudi/Wahhabi states. The first such state (1745-1818) was destroyed by Egypt’s Mehmet Ali with Ottoman support; the second (1824-1891) was also defeated by the Ottomans.

By contrast, the kingdom has no problematic history with Pakistan. On the contrary, the Saudis have bankrolled the Pakistani state, and proved a generous host to its current prime minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif, during his long exile following the military coup that toppled his government in 1999.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Pakistan since the early years of its independence. Given that Pakistan was founded in 1947 on a religious basis, it is not surprising that its leaders sought support from the source of Islam, Mecca, then under Saudi rule. The kingdom, in turn, exported its Wahhabi teachings to the “Land of the Pure,” ultimately fueling the Islamic extremism and sectarian violence of the Taliban and others.
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Part of the Saudi plan today is to use Pakistanis as the backbone for a new Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) joint military force. Pakistani forces under Saudi command were used in operations to quell Shiite uprisings in Bahrain in 2011, and the Saudis now want a standby force ready to put down Islamist and Shiite provocations whenever and wherever they may appear in the gulf. In the event of an existential threat in the region, in particular a confrontation with Iran, Pakistan would offer the kingdom a form of deadly protection denied it by the West.

So to what extent can Pakistan really enhance Saudi Arabia’s security, particularly in a war against Iran? Pakistan is badly fractured, with domestic terrorism running rampant. Its military lacks the capacity to intervene in Saudi Arabia’s defense while maintaining not only domestic security, but also readiness for war against India (an obsession of Pakistani generals).

Moreover, Pakistan’s substantial Shiite population might join the ranks of the violently disaffected if the military backed the Saudis in a sectarian war. And the Pakistan People’s Party, now in opposition but still a powerful domestic force, shares interests with Iran.

So, although the strategic value of closer military ties with Pakistan seems highly questionable, Saudi Arabia has little choice. The GCC is in fact disintegrating, following Qatar’s ouster for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Oman’s voluntary departure from the group. That, together with the kingdom’s deepening distrust of the U.S., is fueling a growing sense of isolation. Pakistan may not be anyone’s idea of an ally when facing an existential threat; for Saudi Arabia, however, it is an idea whose time has come.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/03/28/commentary/saudi-ara...

[Riaz Haq]

From Eurasia Review:

Pakistan has played a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the current crisis in Yemen.

Pakistan's role of direct involvement with the Middle East is not usually the subject of much comment. Now there is reason to believe that Pakistan has played a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the current crisis in Yemen.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when many Gulf countries, flush with oil money, purchased state-of-the-art military hardware, they had also to buy the technical expertise and the training to operate it. They looked to the nearest Muslim country with the capacity to provide this – Pakistan. Over the years scores of Pakistani army and air force personnel have been posted to Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Pakistani naval officers also served in UAE, training local naval forces. 


More recently, the turbulence affecting the Middle East has brought Gulf states even closer to Pakistan. External and internal threats have resulted in bilateral agreements between Pakistan and individual states that have provided security cover for them – for example, the recent military exercises conducted jointly by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-Pakistan relationship may go even deeper. There are reports that last year King Salman of Saudi Arabia – then Crown Prince – visited Islamabad and provided Pakistan with a $1.5 billion grant towards its nuclear programme, the other half of the deal guaranteeing the Saudis a nuclear weapon when, or if, needed. 

This special relationship might have been expected to result in strong Pakistani support for Saudi Arabia’s recent military involvement in the chaos that is tearing Yemen apart. With the Houthi rebels installed as an interim government, the legitimate President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, fled to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, exasperated by Iran’s continued support for the rebels, instituted a series of air strikes against them in an operation it dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm”. At the same time it mustered a coalition of ten Middle East states that agreed to form a fighting force to defeat the Houthi take-over in Yemen and restore President Hadi to office. To support this effort, Saudi Arabia called on Pakistan to contribute troops, a warship and aircraft to its coalition forces. The first response of the Pakistani government was to agree to join the coalition, and to offer its assistance.

This reaction must have sent shock waves through the Iranian leadership. If Pakistan unleashed its formidable military capability against the Houthis, the Iranian-backed rebels could well be defeated. So Iran set in train a diplomatic effort designed to eliminate the possibility of direct Pakistani involvement in the conflict.

The diplomatic counter-attack began with an invitation from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – on the face of it a surprising move, since Turkey had also initially declared itself in support of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Yemen. Erdogan duly appeared in Tehran, no doubt wondering why the world’s leading Shi’ite Muslim state was seeking to hob-nob with the head of strongly Sunni Turkey. 

Some sort of secret deal must have been concluded, for a few days later Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, flew to Islamabad. The London-based Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported from several sources that Zarif’s mission was to try to convince Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to join a coalition with Turkey – now apparently no longer in support of Operation Decisive Storm – against Saudi Arabia. The suggestion was rejected by both Sharif and Pakistan’s army commander, General Raheel Sharif. Nothing daunted, Zarif held a press conference at which he appealed over the heads of the government to members of the Pakistani parliament, which was just then debating the Saudi request for Pakistan’s assistance

http://www.eurasiareview.com/25042015-pakistan-in-the-middle-east-o...