Apr 13, 2015

Saudi Arabia's request for tangible Pakistani help for Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen has led to an unprecedented rejection by Islamabad. In response to a direct face-to-face request from King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud for ground troops and aircraft for the war against Zaydi Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen last month, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took the issue to the Pakistani parliament, which on April 10 unanimously decided to stay out of the war. On April 13, Sharif reaffirmed the parliament's decision while also pledging Pakistan's commitment to Saudi Arabia.

After five days of debate, not one speaker apparently supported sending ground troops. While many praised Saudi Arabia as a friend of Pakistan, almost all called for a political solution and diplomacy to end the crisis. Some even blamed Riyadh for starting the war. Every political party opposed sending troops. The consensus was to stay neutral while reaffirming friendship with the kingdom. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Pakistan during the debate. He met with both Prime Minister Sharif and Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif. The army has argued that it is stretched too thin with a counterterrorism campaign against the Pakistani Taliban and tensions with India to send troops to Yemen. Sharif said April 13 that he urged Zarif to rein in the Houthis and support a political solution. The Pakistani response is a potentially big setback for the bilateral relationship. Given that Sharif owes his life to the Saudis, who helped save him from execution after the 1999 Gen. Pervez Musharraf coup and provided him exile (with a little help from Washington), it's a remarkable development. No Pakistani politician knows the Saudis better than Sharif or has more access to their inner circle. Why did Sharif send the issue to parliament? A revealing editorial in the Pakistani press suggests the prime minister had already concluded that the Saudis have blundered into a war they cannot win and for which they are unprepared. Their goals, restoring the Hadi government to power and preventing the creation of a pro-Iranian regime on the Arabian Peninsula, are not matched by the resources available. Sharif met with the king and his advisers on the eve of the war and judged they "had made a strategic error led by an untested leadership that panicked" at Iran's role in Yemen.

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