Pak-Saudi ties: indispensability, interdependence and pragmatism
Saudi Arabia is pivotal to Pakistan in a world where Pakistan badly needs more friends
The writer is a retired major general and has an interest in International Relations and Political Sociology. He can be reached at [email protected] and tweets @20_Inam
When my Op-Ed, “The Imperatives of Pakistan-Saudi Relations”, was published in this space on August 26, 2020, the historic bilateral relations were undergoing some transformation, adjusting to a changed geo-strategic environment.
The perceived “chasm” was providing a lot of ammunition to the detractors. And the conspiracy theorists were in overdrive to forecast a permanent split in bilateral ties due to: a) Saudi retrieval of loans and oil supply on deferred payment to Pakistan; b) Saudi inability to rope in Pakistan firmly and effectively into its anti-Iran alliance; c) the difference of opinion over interlocution on Kashmir from the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) platform; d) Saudi Arabia’s perceived closeness with India (high-level visitations, military and economic cooperation etc); e) Pakistan’s ill-conceived move to find alternatives to the OIC by making a parallel grouping with Turkey, Iran and Malaysia; e) feeling in Pakistan that the Saudi embrace was fairly suffocating under the dynamism of an energetic Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)… eager to get too much done too quickly — from changing the status-quo of Saudi foreign relations to overhauling the Saudi outlook in an all-encompassing manner; and f) the harsh emigration conditionalities for Pakistani expats, etc.