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Straws dont float in the winds of international diplomacy because a sudden gust has risen on a lazy afternoon. They are sent up there to check the weather at various levels of a turbulent atmosphere. If a straw does encounter too much friction and gets burnt out, no great deal: It was only a straw. But if it floats and finds a destination then it becomes an asset in the construction of a bridge, sometimes between nations divided by a sea of differences, rather than merely a gulf of irritations.
In 1947, the Arab world watched the emergence of Pakistan and India with wary interest. Its more vibrant parts, like Egypt, were weighed by their own dilemmas; not least of them being imposed monarchs who gave orders to Cairo and took orders from London. Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru took an active dislike to Egypts King Farouk, which may explain his disproportionate fondness for Gamal Nasser, who overthrew the royals in what must surely be among the more polite coups in history. A defining moment came in 1956 when secular Nehru supported Nasser during the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez and Islamic Pakistan stood by Britain. As one Arab commentator tartly noted, The Pakistanis think that Islam was born in 1947.
But Saudi Arabia, deeply enmeshed in the Western embrace, had little time for left radicalism, whether genuine or pseudo. It was drawn to Pakistan by both religion and politics, not to mention geopolitics. Pakistan positioned itself as a frontline state against Soviet communism (though not China), long before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan did indeed make it a borderline case. Saudi kings are also, as rulers of Mecca and Medina, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. They were attracted as well by Pakistans claim to be a fortress of the faith between Hindu-dominated South Asia and Atheist-Communist Central Asia.
Few nations have been as skilful as Pakistan in exploiting the uses of adversity. It turned the period between two wars, of Bangladesh in 1971 and Afghanistan in 1979, into a decade of resurrection. The strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was cemented to seemingly unbreakable levels. Saudi support financed the Pakistani nuclear programme, advertised then as an Islamic bomb. Zulfiqar Ali Bhuttos Lahore Islamic conference in 1974 was a phenomenal success, and lives on both in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and in symbols scattered across Pakistani cities.
The Pak-Saudi relationship found its true historic moment during the 10-year Afghan war against the Soviet Union, funded by Saudis, armed by America, and conducted by President Zia-ul-Haq, who might have been put into power from a Riyadh casting couch. When the Soviets were driven out in 1989, there was still the future of Afghanistan to worry about. In 1994 Pakistan launched the Taliban; by 1996 the Taliban had taken Kabul. Pakistan had not only extended its strategic space to the rear, the perennial dream of its military establishment, it had also turned this into Islamic space. Pakistan, UAE and Saudi Arabia were the only three nations to recognise the Taliban government.
The Saudi ship of state turns at a glacial pace, but the straws began to float with greater frequency after 9/11 zeroed the war against terrorism into the AfPak region. Riyadh began to praise the rising economies of China and India. I recall a startling statement by a Saudi minister made in Islamabad: Indian Muslims, he argued, were not a minority, but equal citizens of their nation. This would have tweaked an ear or two in the land created of the two-nation theory. In 2006 King Abdullah raised the profile with his state visit to India.
And yet there was a long step to the point where Saudis would hand over Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, wanted by India for his crucial role in the planning and operations of the Mumbai terror carnage. Ansari had gone to Saudi Arabia for safety; he discovered that Saudi interrogators wanted to know what he knew. Only when Saudis were convinced that his Pakistani passport was fake, and that he was an Indian, did they send him back to face trial in his own country. They chose to cooperate with India at the expense of Pakistan. This is not an individual decision. This is policy; and therefore the start of a process.
It is facile to suggest that they did so under American pressure. Riyadh is not a cardboard government. King Abdullah is convinced that such demons are as injurious to the stability of Saudi Arabia as they are to India. He has also ripped apart one of the great falsehoods propagated by many Muslim terrorists: That they had the sanction of faith. They never did. They do not now. They never will.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will remain the closest of friends, and the best of allies. But the Saudis have ensured that it will not live outside the parameters of law and world order.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.
WaPo doing a similar story on the anti-terror co-operation by the Saudis
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Saudi Arabia's policy shift toward India helps nab terror suspects - The Washington Post
NEW DELHI For years, India watched helplessly as many of its most-wanted terrorism suspects traveled freely to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan with new identities and passports and without fear of arrest.
But things appear to have changed. Last week, Saudi Arabia deported an Indian accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people, including six Americans. At the same time, news came that Riyadh is likely to deport another accused terrorist to India in the next few weeks.
The shift in Saudi policy toward India is part of the kingdoms broader foreign policy makeover since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, analysts say.
This deportation is really a first, and it signals Saudi Arabias changing attitude toward India as much as it also signals the internal changes in Saudi society, said K.C. Singh, a former Indian diplomat. It coincides with India aligning itself with American interests and Indias cautious distancing from Iran.
Saudi Arabia also gives India a gateway to the entire Arab region, where it has little influence, compared with Pakistan. Saudi Arabia can assist India in its quest for energy in the region, improve its access to trading partners and help it address radicalism among Indian Muslims who migrate to the Middle East for lucrative work.
Saudi Arabia has not exactly been Indias friend all these years. In fact, it has resolutely supported Pakistan on many matters, especially the long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over the Himalayan province of Kashmir.
But the handover last week of Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari is deeply embarrassing for Pakistan because the evidence in his case points to the involvement of the Pakistani state in the Mumbai attacks, Indian officials said. On Thursday, Islamabad denied the charge.
Investigators said it was Zabiuddins voice that was heard from a control room in Pakistan guiding the 10 gunmen in Mumbai as they went about shooting people at a cafe, two five-star hotels, a train station and a Jewish prayer center. The FBI helped intercept the calls, officials said.
Zabiuddin, also known as Abu Jundal, later traveled to Saudi Arabia with a Pakistani passport and began raising funds there and recruiting men for future attacks, investigators said. The United States tracked him to the kingdom and alerted New Delhi and Riyadh, officials said.
It is no longer safe for Indian terrorists living in Pakistan to travel to Saudi Arabia with new names and Pakistani passports, said a senior intelligence officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Many of them go there routinely for the hajj pilgrimage and Islamic charity. Some also go to Saudi Arabia to enlist Indian laborers into their militant network.
In May, police in Saudi Arabia detained another Indian, Fasih Mehmood, who is accused in India of being involved in a bomb blast outside a cricket stadium and an incident in which gunmen shot at foreign tourists outside a mosque in 2010.
Indias diplomatic ties with Riyadh began changing in 2006 after Saudi Arabias King Abdullah visited New Delhi. In 2010, the two nations signed several pacts, including agreements on energy, counterterrorism, narcotics, money laundering and extradition. A year ago, Riyadh agreed to double its oil exports to India, helping New Delhi reduce its reliance on Iran.
But the recent warmth and the deportation do not mean that Riyadh has turned away from Pakistan entirely, officials said.
It doesnt have implications for interstate relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, said Ali Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani diplomat who heads the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistans capital. It is not meant to cause embarrassment to Pakistan.
Richard Leiby in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Straws dont float in the winds of international diplomacy because a sudden gust has risen on a lazy afternoon. They are sent up there to check the weather at various levels of a turbulent atmosphere. If a straw does encounter too much friction and gets burnt out, no great deal: It was only a straw. But if it floats and finds a destination then it becomes an asset in the construction of a bridge, sometimes between nations divided by a sea of differences, rather than merely a gulf of irritations.
In 1947, the Arab world watched the emergence of Pakistan and India with wary interest. Its more vibrant parts, like Egypt, were weighed by their own dilemmas; not least of them being imposed monarchs who gave orders to Cairo and took orders from London. Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru took an active dislike to Egypts King Farouk, which may explain his disproportionate fondness for Gamal Nasser, who overthrew the royals in what must surely be among the more polite coups in history. A defining moment came in 1956 when secular Nehru supported Nasser during the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez and Islamic Pakistan stood by Britain. As one Arab commentator tartly noted, The Pakistanis think that Islam was born in 1947.
But Saudi Arabia, deeply enmeshed in the Western embrace, had little time for left radicalism, whether genuine or pseudo. It was drawn to Pakistan by both religion and politics, not to mention geopolitics. Pakistan positioned itself as a frontline state against Soviet communism (though not China), long before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan did indeed make it a borderline case. Saudi kings are also, as rulers of Mecca and Medina, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. They were attracted as well by Pakistans claim to be a fortress of the faith between Hindu-dominated South Asia and Atheist-Communist Central Asia.
Few nations have been as skilful as Pakistan in exploiting the uses of adversity. It turned the period between two wars, of Bangladesh in 1971 and Afghanistan in 1979, into a decade of resurrection. The strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was cemented to seemingly unbreakable levels. Saudi support financed the Pakistani nuclear programme, advertised then as an Islamic bomb. Zulfiqar Ali Bhuttos Lahore Islamic conference in 1974 was a phenomenal success, and lives on both in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and in symbols scattered across Pakistani cities.
The Pak-Saudi relationship found its true historic moment during the 10-year Afghan war against the Soviet Union, funded by Saudis, armed by America, and conducted by President Zia-ul-Haq, who might have been put into power from a Riyadh casting couch. When the Soviets were driven out in 1989, there was still the future of Afghanistan to worry about. In 1994 Pakistan launched the Taliban; by 1996 the Taliban had taken Kabul. Pakistan had not only extended its strategic space to the rear, the perennial dream of its military establishment, it had also turned this into Islamic space. Pakistan, UAE and Saudi Arabia were the only three nations to recognise the Taliban government.
The Saudi ship of state turns at a glacial pace, but the straws began to float with greater frequency after 9/11 zeroed the war against terrorism into the AfPak region. Riyadh began to praise the rising economies of China and India. I recall a startling statement by a Saudi minister made in Islamabad: Indian Muslims, he argued, were not a minority, but equal citizens of their nation. This would have tweaked an ear or two in the land created of the two-nation theory. In 2006 King Abdullah raised the profile with his state visit to India.
And yet there was a long step to the point where Saudis would hand over Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, wanted by India for his crucial role in the planning and operations of the Mumbai terror carnage. Ansari had gone to Saudi Arabia for safety; he discovered that Saudi interrogators wanted to know what he knew. Only when Saudis were convinced that his Pakistani passport was fake, and that he was an Indian, did they send him back to face trial in his own country. They chose to cooperate with India at the expense of Pakistan. This is not an individual decision. This is policy; and therefore the start of a process.
It is facile to suggest that they did so under American pressure. Riyadh is not a cardboard government. King Abdullah is convinced that such demons are as injurious to the stability of Saudi Arabia as they are to India. He has also ripped apart one of the great falsehoods propagated by many Muslim terrorists: That they had the sanction of faith. They never did. They do not now. They never will.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will remain the closest of friends, and the best of allies. But the Saudis have ensured that it will not live outside the parameters of law and world order.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.
WaPo doing a similar story on the anti-terror co-operation by the Saudis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saudi Arabia's policy shift toward India helps nab terror suspects - The Washington Post
NEW DELHI For years, India watched helplessly as many of its most-wanted terrorism suspects traveled freely to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan with new identities and passports and without fear of arrest.
But things appear to have changed. Last week, Saudi Arabia deported an Indian accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people, including six Americans. At the same time, news came that Riyadh is likely to deport another accused terrorist to India in the next few weeks.
The shift in Saudi policy toward India is part of the kingdoms broader foreign policy makeover since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, analysts say.
This deportation is really a first, and it signals Saudi Arabias changing attitude toward India as much as it also signals the internal changes in Saudi society, said K.C. Singh, a former Indian diplomat. It coincides with India aligning itself with American interests and Indias cautious distancing from Iran.
Saudi Arabia also gives India a gateway to the entire Arab region, where it has little influence, compared with Pakistan. Saudi Arabia can assist India in its quest for energy in the region, improve its access to trading partners and help it address radicalism among Indian Muslims who migrate to the Middle East for lucrative work.
Saudi Arabia has not exactly been Indias friend all these years. In fact, it has resolutely supported Pakistan on many matters, especially the long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over the Himalayan province of Kashmir.
But the handover last week of Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari is deeply embarrassing for Pakistan because the evidence in his case points to the involvement of the Pakistani state in the Mumbai attacks, Indian officials said. On Thursday, Islamabad denied the charge.
Investigators said it was Zabiuddins voice that was heard from a control room in Pakistan guiding the 10 gunmen in Mumbai as they went about shooting people at a cafe, two five-star hotels, a train station and a Jewish prayer center. The FBI helped intercept the calls, officials said.
Zabiuddin, also known as Abu Jundal, later traveled to Saudi Arabia with a Pakistani passport and began raising funds there and recruiting men for future attacks, investigators said. The United States tracked him to the kingdom and alerted New Delhi and Riyadh, officials said.
It is no longer safe for Indian terrorists living in Pakistan to travel to Saudi Arabia with new names and Pakistani passports, said a senior intelligence officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Many of them go there routinely for the hajj pilgrimage and Islamic charity. Some also go to Saudi Arabia to enlist Indian laborers into their militant network.
In May, police in Saudi Arabia detained another Indian, Fasih Mehmood, who is accused in India of being involved in a bomb blast outside a cricket stadium and an incident in which gunmen shot at foreign tourists outside a mosque in 2010.
Indias diplomatic ties with Riyadh began changing in 2006 after Saudi Arabias King Abdullah visited New Delhi. In 2010, the two nations signed several pacts, including agreements on energy, counterterrorism, narcotics, money laundering and extradition. A year ago, Riyadh agreed to double its oil exports to India, helping New Delhi reduce its reliance on Iran.
But the recent warmth and the deportation do not mean that Riyadh has turned away from Pakistan entirely, officials said.
It doesnt have implications for interstate relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, said Ali Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani diplomat who heads the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistans capital. It is not meant to cause embarrassment to Pakistan.
Richard Leiby in Islamabad contributed to this report.
