Zaheer Bhatti
WHILE ostensibly reflecting a change of heart to some extent by enamouring the Islamic World which he had castigated as breeders and exporters of terrorism during and after his election, Trump at the US-Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh tried to placate the Ummah with a peace call and unity against the scourge of terrorism. He killed many birds with one stone by exploiting the sectarian divide among the Islamic world swinging its pendulum towards a more pliable and resourceful Riyadh having earlier threatened to halt its military aid after its bombing of Yemen, compared to a somewhat independent Tehran who his predecessor Obama had tried to woo. In the process Trump businessman, succeeded in selling a US $ 110 billion military hardware package to the Saudi monarch besides attracting a hoard of treasured gifts from him. Unwittingly though in the same breath Trump spilled the beans, himself fuelling the fires of the sectarian conflict while condemning Iran, a leading nation among the Islamic world for sponsoring terrorism and holding it responsible for training armed groups in the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, whereas even the blind knows from their brail that in instigating rebellion and unleashing the likes of ISIS and Daesh, besides an aborted bid against Turkey, it was the US which qualified as the sole supplier of universal terrorism fuelling fires in the Muslim world eying its oil and mineral wealth and making sure to keep their sectarian divide alive. For illustration just follow its trail of the 1967 Arab-Israel war, the 8-year Iran-Iraq conflict, the Middle East ‘Desert Storm’, ransacking and now re-building Afghanistan courtesy 9/11, it has succeeded in warming the war theatres in Asia in a bid to vainly oversee the rising power of China through its Indian proxy. Trump urged the Riyadh forum to boycott and isolate Iran, once again renewing the imperial intent to precipitate the willfully premeditated wedge among the Muslim Ummah in contradiction to his peace call. The fact that there was no change of heart but only of strategy, was writ large in the Trump rhetoric during which even mention of the worldwide acknowledged vanguard Pakistani role in the fight against terrorism was conspicuously missing despite costing it dearly in men and materials besides unending instability and opportunity loss in trade in excess of 125 billion US dollars till date which continues to mount. Trump rubbed salt upon the wound instead in pointedly mentioning India and its puppet Government in Afghanistan for being victims of terrorism.
It would have been worth reminding Donald Trump unless the State Department briefings prior to his sojourn missed doing so on purpose, that Pakistan in playing the sucker as it always did in the past in return only for sanctions, had this time as well offered its neck in the US war on terror by standing with it against a Muslim neighbour which it had helped vacate Soviet aggression at the cost of housing over 3 million Afghans fleeing their homeland; this time to find itself embroiled in the quagmire created by its imperial ventriloquist, and eventually forced to own the so-called war on terror imposed upon it. Pakistan encountered a disillusioning rebuff at the Riyadh US-Arab-Islamic forum over its unparalleled sacrifices against the war on terror, as it was ignored not only by Trump but also failed to find mention leave alone acknowledgment in the Saudi Monarch’s speech with whose Country and hierarchy Pakistan’s current Government does not tire fraternizing and vowing to defend. This scribe had raised eyebrows at the prospect of Pakistani Premier’s participation in a forum suspected of being a US-sponsored conglomerate of its pliant Muslim nations against those who refused to submit to its unsavoury global agenda. If an ordinary person like me could smell a rat why could not the Pakistan’s Foreign Office or its major domo the Prime Minister himself!
To one’s embarrassment, one at first groped to catch a glimpse of Nawaz Sharif and his delegation in the Saudi coverage of the Summit Hall which focused on the Indian flag and its delegation but could not find the Pakistani delegation which went amiss except a side image in one passing moment of the Pakistani Premier sunk in his seat somewhere at the rear, leave alone his much touted address which went by default as he haplessly listened to the one-sided tirade without having opportunity to remind the forum that it ought to stand for unity and not division; so much for his Royal reception and so-called stand against terrorism.
It sounded like a joke for Nawaz Sharif to make a statement to the media at a Medina luncheon well after conclusion of the Riyadh Summit about what Pakistan’s involvement in the US staged terror campaign had cost it, and that Pakistan was still to decide whether to be a part of the ostensibly Saudi-sponsored Alliance against terrorism while having thoughtlessly allowed its former Army Chief to head the Force without making sure that it ought to be an Alliance of Muslim Ummah without exception, and against all external threats. The afterthought if at all ought to have been delivered immediately after the Summit in Riyadh.
The PM’s camp attempted to justify his participation in the controversial forum saying he could not afford to annoy Saudi Arabia which was a long-time friend, as if Pakistan could do so at the cost of Iran another leading Muslim neighbour it could ill afford to lose either. Is there an explanation Mr. Prime Minister to this self-invited ignominy and yet another diplomatic faux pa! And would you have cared to at least privately seek Saudi clarification as to the reasons for the embarrassment caused after having assured Pakistan that the Alliance was not against any particular country, and should not the Prime Minister as a mark of protest have politely declined the 2 bullet-proof cars gifted to him, or is that the price of national honour!
