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What is behind Nawaz Sharif's rapid, frequent visits?

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Ahmar Mustikhan
Ahmar MustikhanMar 06, 2015 | 15:48

What is behind Nawaz Sharif's rapid, frequent visits?

It is true that when Muslims in Pakistan, like Muslims anywhere in the world, pray to their God or Allah they face towards Mecca. However, when the civilian and military rulers in Pakistan's twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, namely Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief general Raheel Sharif - no relations other than being Punjabi Muslims - pray with their faces towards Mecca, there is one thing in their mind: Saudi riyals. And there has never been a better time for the money-hungry Pakistani civil and military establishment to beg the Saudis for riyals than in the reign of new King Salman. Born with congenital defects with Hindu hate as its official ideology, Pakistan's very survival from the get-go has relied largely on Saudi financial largess. Just last year King Salman, then crown prince, announced a "gift" of one point five billion dollars for Pakistan, which later turned out to be monies for the purchase of Pakistan arms for the Syrian rebels. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Pakistan sells fighter jets, anti-tank missiles, armored personal carriers, and small arms to Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Malaysia.

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So what prompts Sharif's third Saudi yatra in less than 50 days? Saudi Arabia, in addition to being the holiest land for global Muslims, has also been the refuge for all kinds of "colourful" Muslim dictators from Idi Amin of Uganda to Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose main colour was that their hands were red with the blood of their own people. Sharif himself is no stranger in Riyadh. The kingdom which is called holy by Pakistan rulers, but unholy and undemocratic by the rest of the world, hosted Sharif and his entire family as political refugees for seven years after his government was ousted in the military coup staged by former Army chief and coup leader general Pervez Musharraf. The Saudis, who had brokered Sharif's exile with general Musharraf, also brokered the return home of the "lion of Punjab" seven years later.

As Sharif left for Saudi Arabia, "The speculation in Islamabad is the king wants assurances from Sharif now that, if the Iran negotiations produce either a bad deal or no deal, Pakistan will live up to its long-standing commitment to Saudi security. That is understood in Riyadh and Islamabad to include a nuclear dimension," writes Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and one of the few academics on Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington DC, who is ready to call a spade a spade.

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Saudi democrats living in exile do not have much love lost for their monarchs or for that matter their sleazy guards or chowkidars, Pakistan Army. Of course such democrats have to run away from the kingdom to live to see another day and enlighten the rest of the world about the goings-on in one of the world's most despotic kingdoms. One such democracy defender in Washington DC is Dr Ali H Alayami, executive director of the center for democracy and human rights in Saudi Arabia (CDHR). Dr Alayami who has been trying to awaken the world conscience to the grizzly goings-on in the so-called holy land, accuses the Saudi monarchy of practicing modern-day slavery. He says Saudi population is united by their resentment of the ruling family even as the sword and external support provide legitimacy for the decadent monarchy. Dr Alayami believes no government in history has used religion more cunningly than the Saudi rulers and fears the "cosmetic reforms" that were undertaken by the late King Abdullah, may be washed away by King Salman, a former governor of Riyadh for 53 years, who has long been in bed with global Islamists and "sending money to extremists all over the world, including Kashmir". Dr Alayami said the call of the monarchy for inter-faith dialogue was a farce and as he notes the king personally promoted the obscurantist cleric from India, Zakir Naik, "The new monarch gave Naik the King Faisal International Prize - highest civilian award - and 200,000 dollars in cash, even though Naik calls all other religions a farce and justifies the sexual slavery of their women by Muslims". Dr Alayami says it is high time India should check out what Zakir Naik is doing. "(Narendra) Modi is underestimating them and is trying to appease them," Dr Alayami regrets. According to The New York Times, Naik defended Osama bin Laden in the following words, "If he is terrorising America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him," he said. "Every Muslim should be a terrorist."

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The Saudi scholar says Pakistan - the fast cracking "fortress of Islam" - has had deep-rooted political and military ties with the Saudi monarchs since its very birth, recalling that Pakistan sent troops to Saudi Arabia to deal with the threat from Houtis in Yemen half century ago and just five years ago in 2009, the then Saudi deputy defence minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan thanked Pakistan for help against the Houtis in Yemen. Dr Alayami points out Pakistan had close ties with Saudis under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and after him army coup leader general Zia-ul-Haq, who "Wahabised" Pakistani politics under the slogan of Nizam-i-Mustafa, or system of the Prophet. Dr Alayami attributes much of terrorism and extremism in Pakistan, Kashmir and elsewhere in the world to generous Saudi funding. "Pakistan is today a colony of Saudi Arabia," Dr Alayami said. "Saudis are actually paying for the Pakistani nuclear programme."

Not surprisingly, alarm bells started ringing in Washington DC a month ago when a senior Pakistan military general visited Saudi Arabia. Simon Henderson, Baker fellow and director of the gulf and energy policy programme at the Washington institute wrote about the Saudi visit by chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee general. Rashid Mahmoud and his meeting with King Salman. Henderson writes for decades, Riyadh has been judged a supporter of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, providing financing in return for a widely assumed understanding that, if needed, Islamabad will transfer technology or even warheads." Henderson's view was also echoed by the BBC Newsnight's diplomatic editor Mark Urban, who wrote, "Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom".

Henderson notes amid growing Saudi unease over Iran's thawing of ties with the West, last year Pakistan's chief of Army staff, general Raheel Sharif, was a guest of honour when Saudi Arabia publicly paraded its Chinese CSS-2 missiles for the first time since they were delivered in the 1980s - according to analysts, a crude attempt by the Saudis to tell the West they have other sources of arms and defence for defending their rotten kingdom. As Pakistan's civil and military rulers bow even more greedily before the Saudis - as if the new mantra in Islamabad was Saudis are great or "Saudi Akbar" - nearly-failing state Pakistan's ties with Iran are fast deteriorating. In March last year, Zachary Keck observed in an article in The Diplomat that Iran and Pakistan appear to be on a collision course that will in all likelihood leave relations severely strained in the coming years. Keck pointed out the Iranian interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, went so far as to threaten to send Iranian troops into Pakistan. Keck believes Pakistan-Iran rivalry is not restricted to the borders but has radiated all the way to Syria. Pakistan's "Saudi pivot" happened even though Asif Ali Zardari, a known Shia, was the president of Pakistan. This may not surprise many as he got power in dowry by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of the most popular member of Bhutto clan, Premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Shia who cultivated close ties with the Saudis when he became foreign minister under military dictator general Ayub Khan. Pakistan's backing of Syrian rebels did see one casualty, the country's permanent representative to the UN, Abdullah Hussain Haroon. That seat today is kept warm by Dr Maleeha Lodhi, well respected in the army GHQ for her excellent oral, and writing skills.

Syed Wasif Ali, a psychiatrist with the Ziauddin Hospital, told this writer from Karachi, his understanding was the ongoing Saudi-Pakistan relationship is linked to crushing the Shias not only inYemen but also Bahrain. Many of Dr Ali's co-medics have been the favorite prey of Saudi-financed Wahabi militants. "In recent years more than 150 Shia doctors have been target killed in Karachi," Dr Ali said. He adds more than 300 doctors, lawyers and journalists have been killed by the Wahabis in the Saudi-funded proxy war. "Saudis are nurturing the nurseries of the Taliban - seminaries - all over the country, leading to promotion of extremism and terrorism." In particular, the strategic France-sized Balochistan, which has long struggled to secede from Pakistan and continues to bleed profusely, has been witnessing a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran, where thousands of Shia Hazaras have been targeted by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, with the support of Pakistani intelligence services. With Saudi funding, the ISI has sponsored a number of Wahabi death squads to not only counter the Baloch freedom movement but also massacre the Shia Hazaras, who are looked down upon by Islamabad as Iran's fight column. Even if the two "lions of Punjab" the one without teeth Premier Sharif and the more important, the one with the stick, Army chief general Sharif, fail to deliver anything, King Salman can thank his "lucky crescent" - notwithstanding his hate for the star of David - his kingdom has found a strange bedfellow against Iran: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a long list of charges, Netanyahu told the US Congress Tehran attempted "to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, right here in Washington, DC".

Last updated: March 06, 2015 | 15:48
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