Islamabad

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Pakistan is in a disadvantageous position to play any role in the fast-changing geopolitical and geostrategic dynamics at the regional and global levels.

By Ambassador M. Alam Brohi | February 2025

WHERE ARE WE GOING
With the plunge of Syria, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon in chaos, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Shia rule in Iraq facing imminent threat of de-stabilization while Gaza is being reduced to rubble by the relentless Israel, the Arab states are individually engaged in a frantic and desperate exercise for survival. I feel a strong repulsion to see the ever-shrinking role of the OIC in the Muslim world and the Arab League and the GCC in Arab affairs. All these organizations have been rendered redundant at the global and regional levels by the mutually harmful Arab hostilities and the ever-deepening vulnerability of the wealthy Arab states to the machinations of global power politics.

Being bogged down in endless intrigues to undermine each other, triggering coups, civil strife, sectarian proxy wars, and bloody conflicts in their region and beyond, they are forced to outsource the security of their thrones and oil wealth to the globally and regionally powerful states which, to a large extent, control their foreign and security policies too. Nations shackled by fear, insecurity, and over-indulgence in easy living cease to create men of dazzle and courage destined to change their direction. The Muslim world is muddling through such a barren phase of history.

Over a century or so, the Arabs have been living with foreign support from the Ottoman Caliphates to T.E. Lawrence and the British and French Protectorates. The nascent kingdom of Saudi Arabia struck an alliance with the USA in 1945, conceding the American control over their oil exploration and trade. In tandem with the US policy, the Saudi monarchs were at loggerheads with the Arab nationalist and radical states. The Middle East remained divided into so-called moderate and radical states until Egypt veered to the Western stables after the Camp David Accords. Iraq, Libya, and Syria were reduced to the pale shadows of their erstwhile political stability and power.

The most suffering country in the Arab world has been the impoverished Yemen ever subjected to mutually disastrous Arab intrigues for decades. In the 1960s, the civil strife supported by Saudis and the radical states divided it into two states – the nationalist South Yemen and the monarchist North Yemen. The country reunited just a few decades ago with Ali Abdullah Saleh, an anathema to the Saudi monarchs, at the helm of affairs. The wave of public protests in the Arab world in the so-called Arab Spring also overwhelmed Yemen - fuelled mainly by Arab monarchs to get rid of President Saleh and to bring into power Abdu Rab Al-Mansoor, the Vice President and a favorite of the Saudis.

President Al-Mansoor, challenged by the rebellion of the Shia population, particularly Houthis, who were living a subdued and deprived life in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, could not hold onto the slippery pole of power and had to flee to Riyadh, where he had been staying in past many years. The rest – the formation of a coalition force of many Arab countries to thwart the takeover of the country by the Houthis - is too recent to warrant any elaboration. However, the war in Yemen has exposed many foreign and security policy weaknesses of the Arab countries.

The Arab Spring would have culminated in functional democracies in some Arab countries like Tunisia, where the US-led Western states resisted the machinations of the wealthy Arab states to settle their old scores in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They were also complicit in the military coup d’état against the elected President Muhammad Morsi in Egypt, giving a carte blanche to the new Egyptian military leader for a crackdown against the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin. The Ikhwans are spread over almost all the Arab countries, including Turkey. All Arab states, from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain to Turkey, are over-obsessed with the fear of Ikhwans. The Ikhwans reflect the deep division of the Arab societies into secular and liberals and ideologically motivated Islamists.

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