Litmus-testing the session

I am writing this before the joint session of parliament to debate the manner in which Pakistan should respond to a Saudi Arabian request for our support in its conflict with Houthi rebels in Yemen. Rather than attempting to analyse something that has not yet happened, I thought it would be interesting to define a framework for analysis, rather than presenting more analysis.
My own views on whether we should or should not be sending troops to the Gulf region are clear and unlikely to change. We should not. Pakistan has no business putting Pakistani troops in harm’s way for any reason other than direct threats to the Pakistani homeland. Troop deployment cycles, especially since Operation Zarb-e-Azb launched last June, are barely sustainable at current levels. Another front is a recipe for fatigue.
Furthermore, though the fight in Yemen is not purely a sectarian one, nor purely one between Saudi and Iranian proxies, this is how it is perceived across the Muslim world. Pakistan has a sectarian balance that requires it to, at best, play the role of peacemaker between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and at worst, remain utterly and intransigently neutral. Finally, with military courts, and the LeJ on the run, and with a Kandahari Taliban getting closer to the negotiating table, Pakistan has way too much going on at home and on the Afghanistan front, to even think about looking elsewhere.
In this environment, the quality of debate in the joint session of the parliament becomes even more important. How Pakistan eventually responds to the Saudi demand, or has already responded, may or may not be something that will be fully known publicly. At some level, perhaps the actual question of whether Pakistan decides for or against this Yemen intervention is almost secondary. Perhaps the most important question isn’t whether we send troops, but how we talk about the possibility of sending troops. In particular, we should seek answers to the following questions to illuminate

our sense of the current health of our democracy and its future direction.
First, is the primary focus of the debate the Pakistani national interest? Second, how many cheap emotional tricks will be deployed? By whom? Third, will any real, verifiable data inform the debate? And what will be the quality of the government’s brief to parliament? Finally, fourth, how much will a post-Lausanne Iran figure in the discussion?
On the first question, we should be open to various definitions of the national interest. If we are to be defined economically, then the national interest could be defined in immediate balance of payments deficit terms, or it could be defined in a more medium-run, sustenance of workers’ remittances terms, or it could be defined in long-run economic and fiscal sovereignty terms.
Every single Pakistani government, save ZAB’s first one, has chosen short-term definitions that have allowed Pakistan’s critics to call it a rent-a-state with little to no self-respect. In Urdu, we have an old saying: apnee izzat, apnay haath. Of course, we may choose to define the national interest in military terms too. Maybe Saudi Arabia will help us negotiate and pay for 100 Apache Helicopters and 50 A-10 gunships from good ole Uncle Sam. For a military hardware aficionado stuck in the 1980s like me, that would be a dream. But hopefully some parliamentarians would also argue that militarily, a deployment to the Arabian desert is a bad idea, no matter how many goodies are promised in return.
On the second question, we have already seen the deployment of cheap emotional tricks. As we emerged from the weekend, someone very clever had followed up the fear-mongering of the Holy Mosques (God forbid) being at risk, with the idea of the quid pro quo in the deal being GCC support to Pakistan, over India, in case of a conflict. We should be disabused of both notions from the get-go.
This bogeyman of Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity? Let’s be clear what this is code for, and why it has been deployed. Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity is code for the Two Holy Mosques and two holy cities of Makkah-tul-Mukarramah and Madinah-tul-Munawwarah. The reason this code has been deployed is to make arguing against intervening more inconvenient and complicated for those who strongly identify with the Two Holy Mosques.
Since the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, including this humble writer, have an unflinching passion and commitment for the Haram Shareef and the Masjid-e-Nabavi, the deployment of this straw man is meant to serve as the glue that attaches Pakistani passion for our two holy mosques, to the political decisions of the government of the Westphalian nation-state monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Suffice it to say, a conflict between rival Yemeni political groups that make Riyadh nervous is not the same thing as, God forbid, any threat to the two holy mosques. One prays for the well-being not only of the mosques, but even, the custodians of the mosques. This does not have mean that we become subservient to the political decisions made by our beloved custodians.
On the laughable idea that GCC nations would ever choose India over Pakistan, perhaps a quick reference to the demographics of India, and the growth of the Muslim population there would help. So too would an examination of the cost of Indian labour relative to Pakistani labour. Of course, most helpful of all would be the fact that India is already a massive (and growing) consumer of the one thing that the GCC must sell a lot of to remain liquid and viable: oil.
Cheap emotional tricks are ok when we are made subject to them in Bollywood rom-coms, through the use of Priyanka Chopra’s pouty lips, or the ever-effervescent Bips. They are not ok when we are about to send our troops in harm’s way. We should be able to tell the difference.
On the third question of how much real data will be used in the debate, and how well the government would brief parliament, I would not hold my breath. Saudi Arabia’s assistance to Pakistan is the great unquantifiable grey cloud that hovers above, inside and all around our fiscal regime. For national security purposes, publishing detailed accounts of Pakistan’s troop deployments may not be ideal, but surely a parliamentary debate should have some data provided to it.
Are we balancing out a tilt Riyadh-ward, with something meaningful in Tehran’s direction? Maybe working together to take out Jandullah and at least the irreconcilable terrorists among Baloch separatists? Would Khawaja Asif even know of such initiatives, if they existed? Pakistan will be better off by a debate that throws up new information, either in terms of raw numbers or in terms of the kind of operational cooperation we have with other countries.
On the final question, about a post-Lausanne Iran, it will behove parliamentarians from all parties to invest in serious and sober deliberations. The Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, is going to be in Islamabad next week. Pakistan has many legitimate complaints with Iran and its conduct, both on the border, and on issues of importance to Pakistan, such as stability in Afghanistan, and trade in the region. However, if we thought Zarif was a killer diplomat before the post-Lausanne Iran, we are about to witness an unsheathed Persian blade go the full monty on us, here in the region, and beyond.
Pakistani parliamentarians owe this country’s citizens a rich exploration of these four questions and others. How well they explore them may result in putting our soldiers in harm’s way.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.