The Pakistan-Saudi Arabia pact is meant for Middle East cooperation and not in the sub-continental context, as concerns over the agreement rise due to misjudged media reporting despite Saudi clarifications.
The Pakistani-Saudi defence pact has nothing to do with India; rather, it is a message to Israel and its backers spoiling the turf in Southwest Asia.
New Delhi has most likely no reason to fear or even reconsider its ties with Saudi Arabia since Riyadh has invested heavily in India and is on course to push more investments in the country due to a stable marketplace and good returns.
Saudi officials on Thursday talked about getting access to Pakistani nuclear weapons, but did not utter a word suggesting that the Kingdom would send or resort to any military aggression against New Delhi in case a warlike situation breaks out between Pakistan and India.
The message was loud and clear that both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would act as one in case of foreign aggression in the Middle East.
Why fears are unfounded
Neither does India maintain a military presence in the Middle East nor has it promised military support to any nation in the region, including one of New Delhi’s closest allies, Israel, which crossed all red lines by targeting Qatar last week.
Additionally, it can be well understood that Saudi Arabia has good diplomatic relations with India, extending to financial aspirations in the Indian market and not in Israel.
So, in that case also, the military alliance of Islamabad and Riyadh would be focused on Israel and not on India.
Several reports have cast doubts about Saudi Arabia's position and confounded the agreement and taken it out of context, where it said, “an attack on one is an attack on both."
Again, the text was meant for a Middle Eastern context amid growing illegal actions by Israel.
Arab culture is pretty straightforward; when they define enemies and friends, they don’t do business with enemies, regardless of their stature.
They only conduct business affairs with friends, so in that sense, India also remains a good, friendly nation to the Gulf.
Misunderstood statements
Another aspect of the pact is that Saudi officials talked about accessing Pakistani nuclear weapons. This was also a direct message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently threatened to attack everyone if need be.
Also read: Saudi-Pak defence pact reshapes South Asian security architecture
With the inclusion of the Pakistani army and its nuclear arsenal into the mix, it is expected that Netanyahu’s ambitions have now met a dead end if he was considering any possibility of an attack on Saudi Arabia.
Under the agreement, Pakistan will send its troops to Riyadh, who have been actively involved in training Saudi armed forces for decades. Yet having a dedicated force stationed in Riyadh would now pose a serious threat to Israel in the region.
On Friday, Pakistan’s defence minister extended the invitation, saying that the two nations would welcome more members if they wished to join the pact, primarily the Muslim nations from the Middle East.
This once again indicates that the pact would only work in the Middle East, and outside of it, each nation will look after its own matters independently.
Limited commitments
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a treaty of friendship in 1951, laying the foundations for decades of strategic, defence and economic cooperation that saw the two nations working together to build the first nuclear weapons by an Islamic nation.
Saudi Arabia invested billions of dollars in Pakistan just to provide breathing space to Islamabad during the late 1970s and early 80s, when international sanctions were likely to cripple the Pakistani economy.
Saudi Arabian rulers daily supplied more than 50,000 litres of fuel to Pakistan free of cost, giving Islamabad a chance to focus on a much larger mission than worrying about international sanctions.
It was Saudi Arabia’s move that saved Pakistani nuclear research, and in fact, it won’t be wrong to say that without Riyadh’s backing, Pakistan wouldn’t have achieved what it did in May 1998.
While the two nations have targeted Israel with this pact, there is no plausible evidence in the agreement or in the statements thereafter that says Riyadh would mobilise military resources against India if it went to war against Islamabad.
Opportunity for peace
Rather, the agreement has now tied the hands of the Pakistani generals and also pro-war hawks in India, as Riyadh is likely to make things difficult for both nations and act as a barrier between the neighbours having decades of hostilities.
Also read: Pak-Saudi defence pact: Should India be worried?
There are better possibilities of India and Pakistan going for peace talks while shunning the war rhetoric, which should certainly give peace a chance to flourish between nuclear-armed neighbours.
India-Pakistan trade with Saudi Arabia
Trade relations between Saudi Arabia and India in 2023 stood at around 42.98 billion, and India remained a net importer. However, Riyadh contributed over 6.7 per cent of India's total inward remittances.
Bilateral trade between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia stood at US$3.5 billion, with a surplus in favour of Saudi Arabia, and $9.34 billion inward remittances, which is significantly lower compared to India, due to its size and economic strength.
No sub-continental reference
As stated by multiple experts and former diplomats of both countries, the operationalisation of the pact is completely limited to the Middle Eastern context.
With that said, India must carry on business as usual with Saudi Arabia, without concerns, as its position in the Gulf remains strong and steady based on the decades-long bilateral relations with the Kingdom.
The pact is precisely meant to safeguard the interests of the Saudi regime’s monarchy, which is also facing growing pressure on the domestic front, especially over the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
By Waseem Ahmad Ganie
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