Muhammad bin Salman historic visit
Dr. Jassim Taqui
The inevitable has happened at last. Following a quiet diplomacy through the diplomatic channel, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince, Minister of Defence Prince Muhammad bin Salman took everyone by surprise when he paid an official visit to Islamabad on Sunday 28th August 2016.
He was accorded a warm reception reserved for the heads of states with the COAS Gen. Raheel Sharif receiving him in the Marshal Noor Khan military airport.
Prince Muhammad bin Salman wasted no time. In several hours, he met both civilian and military leaderships and achieved a consensus on cementing military, security and counter-terrorism ties between the two countries. The COAS Gen. Raheel Sharif pledged that Pakistan would strongly respond if Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity is threatened.
Interestingly, the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reacted cautiously by expressing “support” for the Kingdom. Linguistically, the careful selection of words by both reflects the differences between the two leaderships in dealing with Saudi Arabia.
Both parties should have announced the deployment of two divisions in Saudi Arabia to protect it from ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Pakistan has no option but to honor its military pact with Saudi Arabia that was signed in the eighties of the last century. Furthermore, Pakistan can’t be passive if the non-state actors used ISIS and Al-Qaeda to create chaos and anarchy in the holiest land in the whole words.
This visit means also the failure of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in winning over the traditional friends of Pakistan especially the GCC and OIC. It gives a message to the Western intelligence agencies that their game of using ISIS against Saudi Arabia is dead.
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