Pakistan-Saudi ties: The best is yet to come
https://arab.news/56yws
Pakistan’s chequered history is peppered with a lot of uncertainty on key issues that have impinged adversely on its fate. Ties between Islamabad and Riyadh have not been one of them. Even at the worst of times, bilateral ties between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been good, and at their best they have served to be a lifeline to Pakistan when it has found itself short of friends.
Now, as Saudi Arabia speeds forward under the able stewardship of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman towards an enhanced native social development cycle and distinct regional social engagement leadership, can ties with Pakistan get even better? Pakistan would do well to prioritize further expanding and deepening ties with the most powerful and influential middle-eastern country, and bringing additional mutually beneficial nuances to an already strategically important relationship.
How can Pakistan go about this desirable objective and what value can it bring to Saudi Arabia as well? A look at the historical bilateral context can help. While state-to-state ties have always been good between Riyadh and Islamabad, which have embraced a broad-range of bilateral interests, people-to-people ties have mostly revolved around shared religious values, rather than overtly cultural and social.
Very little interaction takes place between citizens from both countries in contexts other than worker-employer transactional relationships – around two million Pakistanis live and work in Saudi Arabia from where they remit $6.5 billion annually. Around 15 million people in Pakistan directly depend on their family members, which constitutes the Pakistani diaspora employed in the Kingdom. In this sense there is already a critical mass of positive consciousness in Pakistani minds about Saudi Arabia.
While state-to-state ties have always been good between Riyadh and Islamabad, people-to-people ties have mostly revolved around shared religious values, rather than overtly cultural and social.
Adnan Rehmat
There are other aspects to this bilateral relationship that allows the intelligentsia in Pakistan to hold the Kingdom in high esteem. This ranges from bailing out the state of Pakistan economically over the past two years by holding billions of dollars in the Pakistani treasury, to preventing financial default and meeting Pakistan’s acute energy needs by supplying billions of dollars of oil on deferred payments.
Over the decades, Saudi Arabia has extended deals of varying value to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970’s, President General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980’s, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in the 1990’s, President General Pervaiz Musharraf in 2000 and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2010. Riyadh even gifted the Sharif administration a grant of $1.5 billion. Such state-to-state generosity is rare in the international diplomatic domain.
Over the years, both states — with a shared sense of religious identity and destiny — have successfully developed extensive and enduring commercial, religious, political, and strategic ties. There are Pak-Saudi precedents that need to be built upon as the bilateral relationship dates back to even before Pakistan was founded in 1947. In 1940, a delegation visited Karachi led by the then Crown Prince and future King Saud Bin Abdul Aziz who was accompanied by a team comprising future kings of Saudi Arabia including King Faisal, King Fahd and King Abdullah. They were hosted by future founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s All India Muslim League, laying the foundation of what would eventually become the official Saudi-Pakistan relationship. These ties were formalized when, in 1947, Saudi Arabia became one of the very first countries to recognize Pakistan as an independent state.
The ongoing progressive political and economic reforms are shaping up Saudi society to become a bigger regional player than it already is by allowing it greater cultural diplomacy. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have a mutual interest in the expansion and sustainability of this approach. These opportunities translate into productive outcomes for both by shifting its core focus to people-to-people cultural diplomacy and collaborations around culture, education, entertainment and technology. Despite its deep ties over the years, the optimal potential of the enduring Pakistan-Saudi relationship is far from entirely unlocked.
- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
