Pakistan says it’s part of Saudi-led anti-terror coalition

Saudi officials made the announcement this week that 34 Muslim nations “have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations”.

Britain this week announced plans to help support the new alliance, according to sources.

One possible explanation is that Pakistan genuinely did not know it was part of the Saudi-led alliance but changed its position to save face and shore up its ties with Saudi Arabia.

However, some of the countries named – including Nigeria – were caught off guard by the announcement. “A decision to join has not been taken yet”. The government is sending Pakistani troops to wage a war against the impending terror threat, Isis, which shows immaturity on the part of our foreign policymakers.

“States need to take actions and change policies separately; alliances usually do not deliver on long-term goals”, retired Pakistani Brigadier Sayed Nazir told VOA.

FILE – Armed anti-terror police walk ahead of guard officers carrying bags of evidence from the house of a man suspected of being involved in Islamic State-related activities in south Tangerang, Indonesia’s Banten province, in March 2015. Indonesia’s Chief Security Minister Luhut Pandjaitan clarified later, “We don’t want to join a military alliance”. By any definition, such groups too fall under the rubric “terrorist”, since they are imbued with an extremist, fanatical version of jihad, which they justify in the name of religion.

However, he says, officials in Riyadh are seizing on the coalition as a chance to turn around what some see as decades of sowing hardline Salafist movements. It is not surprising then for Muslim countries to form a separate anti-terrorism group. He also declined to comment on the statements by Indian politicians on the dialogue process, saying it was important to make sustained efforts to realise the shared vision of the leadership of the two countries of a peaceful and stable South Asia.

Iraq said it was confused by the role of the alliance in the fight against terrorism in the region.

Perhaps the most damning criticism of the alliance is just how vague it is.

Especially after a rash of attacks on Western targets claimed by Islamic State in recent months, the United States has increasingly said it thinks that firepower would better be used against IS.

Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran and its allies, Syria and Iraq, were excluded from the alliance, despite the states sharing a common enemy in ISIS.

Sotnichenko, a turkologist and holder of a PhD in history, told Trend Dec. 17 that Saudi Arabia’s statement on establishing the coalition is so far a declaration of intention.