Old soldiers, they say, never die; they just fade out walking into the sunset.
However, Pakistan’s just retired and celebrated soldier, General Raheel Sharif, seems determined to prove the old adage wrong. In just six weeks since he stepped down from the post of chief of army staff, he has continually been in the headlines, for all the wrong reasons.
First, it was his old boss, Pakistan’s last Bonaparte, General Pervez Musharraf, who put him on the spot with his disclosure that Raheel, had leaned on the country’s apex court and the government of Nawaz Sharif to get him out of Pakistan and the reach of its law. That provocative rant of Musharraf caused, to say the least, immense embarrassment to Raheel.
But what has quickly followed on the heels of that scandal couldn’t only be more embarrassing but potentially damaging to both him and the government of Nawaz Sharif.
The whistle-blower, this time, is none other than Defence Minister Khwaja Asif, who has the dubious reputation of being Nawaz’s loose-cannon: In an interview on Pakistan’s largest media network, Geo TV, Asif disclosed that Raheel is poised to head the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, a Saudi handmaiden supposedly pooling 39 Islamic countries under its umbrella.
The Saudis have had their heart set on the alliance since venturing militarily, into neighbouring Yemen, where they have been stranded with no end in sight since early 2015. The Saudi royals gambled on their Pakistani ‘brothers’ lending them a helping hand in their first military adventure abroad.
They tried to pull a fast one on Pakistan by concocting a canard that Pakistan had agreed to beef up their botched military incursion into Yemen with its own contingent.
Nawaz, ever a loyal and docile acolyte of not only the Saudi royals but also of many others in the oil-rich Gulf, was inclined to oblige his mentors. However, the Parliament was in an uproar over the brazen Saudi temerity and shot down the idea with a unanimous parliamentary resolution. Pakistan will not be a party to the Saudi aggression against a fellow Muslim country, the resolution asserted, taking all the wind out of Nawaz’s sails.
The Saudis, with their ego bruised, wouldn’t give up, and followed suit with the nebulous idea of a pan-Islamic force cobbled together with as much participation of Islamic countries as possible with the aim of combating the menace of terrorism plaguing a vast swathe of the Muslim world.
At that point, Pakistan consented, in principle, to join the league. It was, at that early stage, a pie-in-the-sky sort of thing that needed to be fleshed out. Many in Pakistan thought of it as muscle-flexing by the Saudis. The new Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s ambitious son and Defence Minister Mohammad was said to be the architect of this ‘romantic’ idea of a pan-Islamic force to make his own statement.
Not much had happened with regard to the Saudi-led alliance until now. The impasse was suddenly broken with the story of Raheel Sharif infusing life into the moribund idea by taking command of the force.
That has unleashed a maelstrom of speculations among Pakistani pundits. Were the Saudis just waiting for Raheel to be available for the job? Why only Raheel? The putative alliance has 39 countries on board: couldn’t there be another suitable man for the job in one of those countries, with some having a galore of large armies with generals of myriad stripes?
No doubt Raheel earned his laurels in Pakistan with his command of a concerted and bloody—still unfinished—campaign to weed out the scourge of terrorism in Pakistan. His reputation of a soldier’s soldier travelled beyond Pakistan’s shores. It seems to have impressed the Saudis most; Raheel was a frequent visitor to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was routinely received with open arms. Did he charm the Saudis so much that they wouldn’t countenance anyone but him in command of their cherished military alliance?
Pakistan has a huge lobby of Saudi loyalists and tribunes who couldn’t be more elated at this development. They are ecstatic for what they think is a feather in the cap of not only Raheel but Pakistan too, for the good being done by their Saudi patrons for the amorphous Muslim Ummah.
However, pundits with their ears plugged to the jarring, geo-political realities around Pakistan aren’t impressed. They have a point—and sound logic—in arguing that what the Saudis couldn’t ferret out of Pakistan, two years ago, is now being finessed with this clever move to rope in Pakistan.
The Saudi hostility against Iran, Pakistan’s western neighbour, isn’t lost on pragmatic observers. Iran has been in the Saudi hairs ever since its Islamic revolution, of 1979. Such is the Saudi enmity towards Iran that its leaders have, time and again, likened Iran to a serpent that must be decapitated.
And Iran is only too conspicuous by its absence from the alliance. No wonder it worries cool-headed Pakistanis that having Raheel as the head of the alliance would be a Saudi Trojan horse to distance Pakistan from Iran. As it is, Saudi-Iranian proxy sectarian battles have long been waged on Pakistani soil with disastrous consequences for the harmony of an inherently divided Pakistan. The sectarian cleavage is daunting for anyone’s comfort.
Raheel, if it is any comfort, seems alive to this prospect. In his first media pronouncement on the move, he has said he wouldn’t be a party to the alliance sans Iran. Will his Saudi fans and admirers be ready to oblige him is anybody’s guess. One should be reluctant to wage a penny on it.
Karamatullah K Ghori
Former Pakistani diplomat
Email: K_K_ghori@yahoo.com