Last week, two unexpected developments took place in South and West Asia. The first, was the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA), and the second, was US President Donald Trump’s demand that the Taliban return the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan which it had seized from the US in September 2001.
With the signing of the KSA-Pak SMDA, the US ceased to be the guarantor of KSA’s security and Pakistan had taken its place.
The most widely held view is that this happened because of America’s failure to protect its allies in West Asia against Israeli aggression. Qatar, a US ally, was bombed by both the US and Israel disregarding the US guarantee of security and the presence of 20,000 US troops there.
But there are others who think that vacating the guarantor of security role in favour of Pakistan was America’s way of getting West Asian States to manage their own defences, as indeed it did in the case of the European members of NATO. Under MAGA, President Trump had decided not to put US boots on the ground anywhere abroad.
Evidence of this could be seen in Washington’s silence on the KSA-Pakistan pact. The involvement of pro-Trump Pakistani leaders such as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir in bringing about the KSA-Pak SMDA is an indication of the hidden American hand.
Both KSA and Pakistan remain close allies of the US despite the pact. Pakistan became very close to the US after the India-Pakistan war in May this year. Asim Munir was hosted by the US twice this year by Trump first and the CENTCOM next.
The timing of President Trump’s announcement that he intends to retrieve the Bagaram airbase in Afghanistan is also significant and indicative of the new security architecture in West and South Asia. Trump’s statement, in fact, coincided with the signing of the KSA-Pak SMDA.
Both the US and Pakistan are interested in putting the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in its place. While the US suspects that Taliban is not going after ISIS and other anti-American Islamic radicals operating on its soil, Pakistan is convinced that Taliban is not controlling the Pakistani Taliban (aka TTP) based in Afghanistan.
The TTP has been harassing Pakistani forces in the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkwa. A few days ago, Pakistan even dubbed Afghanistan an “enemy” country.
The US would like to have a presence in Bagram to watch the Taliban, China and Iran. Bagram was the biggest American base in the world on which, according to Trump, “a whole planet could be landed.” No wonder he warned Afghanistan that “very bad things could happen” if it did not give back the base to “those who built it” namely the Americans.
Pakistan too is interested in monitoring Iran as it accuses Iran of supporting Baloch separatists in its Balochistan province. It was not long ago that Pakistan and Iran had fired missiles at each other over that issue.
The US had recently banned a top Baloch terrorist group that was harassing Pakistani and Chinese personnel working in Balochistan where China has a port (at Gwadar). China would appreciate the US and Pakistan if they jointly keep the Baloch insurgents in check.
While being friendly to China, Pakistan would not mind the US spying on China. Over decades Pakistan has served the interests of both the US and China in unusual ways. It has been a vital bridge between the two adversaries since the 1960s.
As expected, the Taliban has said that it will not part with Bagram. “Afghanistan and the United States need to engage with one another without the United States maintaining any military presence in any part of Afghanistan," said Zakir Jalal, an Afghan Foreign Ministry official, in a post on X on Thursday.
However, the issue which monopolized global attention in the KSA-Pakistan defence pact, was whether Pakistan would use its nuclear weapons to help KSA. Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khwaja Asif, said that all of Pakistan’s capabilities will be “absolutely available” to KSA.
While there is a theoretical possibility of the use of nuclear weapons under the pact, experts think that it is only a deterrent as all nuclear capabilities are. In Pakistan itself, there is great concern about getting involved in a nuclear conflict in West Asia.
Pakistanis would like the pact to be just an institutionalization of decades-old defence cooperation between Riyadh and Islamabad.
Cooperation between the countries began in 1967. In 1979, Pakistani special forces helped Saudi troops reclaim the religious shrine Masjid al-Haram. In 1982, the two sides institutionalised their security ties through a Bilateral Security Cooperation Agreement that enabled Pakistani training, advisory support and deployments on Saudi soil.
At times, as many as 20,000 Pakistani troops were stationed in the KSA. In February this year, a meeting of the Joint Military Cooperation Committee in Riyadh pledged to expand training and exchanges.
Like other Arab States, the KSA has highly sophisticated military equipment but no fighting ability. This critical gap will be filled by Pakistan which has the best trained and battle-hardened Muslim army in the world.
In return, Pakistan will get Saudi finance to buy Western or Chinese weapons in case there is another war with India. Pakistan’s main adversary is not Israel but India. Saudi money would also help shore up its struggling economy. The agreement helps Pakistan establish itself as a security provider in West Asia.
The agreement has an indirect relevance for Pakistan’s defence against India, its principal adversary. In case India attacks after a terror strike by Pakistan (as warned by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi), Islamabad could call for Saudi assistance and KSA would respond. KSA will not put boots on the ground but help Pakistan financially. It could also stop oil supplies to India. KSA supplies 18% of India’s oil requirements.
However, according to Indian experts, KSA will not spoil its close economic ties with India. In FY 2023–24, the KSA-India bilateral trade reached US$ 42.98 billion. Indian investments in Saudi Arabia reached US$ 3 billion as of August 2023 and Saudi investments in India, totalled US$10 billion.
Some Pakistani commentators feel that the real enemy is not Israel but the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen and other Iranian proxies on its borders. Some others also include groups opposed to the Saudi royal family. Pakistani troops had earlier battled against Saudi insurgents who attacked a mosque in KSA, and Pakistani troops had fought against Palestinians opposed to the rulers of Jordan.
Pakistani commentators have also said that their government’s bid to play the big game in West Asia was meant to divert the attention of the people of Pakistan from challenging domestic issues. It is also pointed out that there is no credit in becoming mercenaries of a foreign power as was the case during the Colonial era.
India’s challenge now is to preserve what is left of its strategic foothold in the Gulf and respond to the reality of a more assertive Pakistan on its borders. Added to its woes is the US sanction on the Chabahar port in Iran, which has been built by India for use as a link with Central Asia.