Opinion The great Game Folio
A fortnightly column on the high politics of the Af-Pak region,the fulcrum of global power play in Indias neighbourhood.
Davis deal
As the Raymond Davis affair dominates US-Pakistan relations,it is quite tempting to be carried away by the surge of simulated nationalism next door. Past record suggests a deal,sooner than later,between Washington and Rawalpindi. The only question is about the terms of that deal. Expect the Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Kayani to shake down the Obama administration hard.
Davis,who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore last month,says he acted in self-defence,and is said to be a CIA employee. There is speculation that the men he killed might be ISI operatives. If this is a quarrel between the CIA and the ISI,the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari and Premier Yousaf Raza Gilani is caught in a cleft stick squeezed on one side by the army which is whipping up public passions and on the other by the Obama administration pressing for an early release of Davis.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi,who was recently sacked as the foreign minister of Pakistan,is presenting himself as the hero who stood up against American pressure to release Davis. Fouzia Wahab,information secretary of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party,had to quit after she said Davis enjoyed diplomatic immunity and therefore could be sent back to the US.
The real question is about law whether Davis enjoyed diplomatic immunity and can avoid trial and punishment in Pakistan. It is about politics what would it take for the Pakistan army to help resolve the issue amicably.
The Obama administration,which took a tough stand in the immediate aftermath of Daviss arrest,appears to be exploring a deal now. John Kerry,the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the US Congress,travelled to Pakistan last week to find a way out. That he could not return triumphantly might mean the Pakistan army has raised the stakes. Any deal on Davis would have two elements one public and the other more substantive.
On the first,there is talk of the US offering an apology to the bereaved families and a reasonable sum of blood money as compensation. While the inflamed public opinion must necessarily be addressed,it is the army that Washington must propitiate in the next few days. What we dont know at this stage is how far the Obama administration might go down that road.
Saudi intervention
As the fires lit by the Egyptian revolt engulf Saudi Arabia from the south west in Yemen,north west in Jordan,north east in Bahrain,and south east in Kuwait all eyes are on King Abdullah,who is 83 and recuperating from three months of medical treatment in the United States and Morocco.
As he returns home in the next few days,his first task will be to get a handle on the situation in tiny Bahrain,which cuts so close to Saudi Arabias vulnerable spot the Shia minority in the oil-rich eastern parts of the kingdom.
In Bahrain,the revolution is not just about economic discontent and accountable governance. It is about the Shia majority nearly 70 per cent of the population marginalised in a nation governed by the Sunni Muslim elite. If the Sunni Saudi royal family is the principal backer of the government in Bahrain,the Shias in Bahrain have strong kinship with their co-religionists across the water in Saudi Arabia.
A regime change in Bahrain,then,will have profound implications for stability in Saudi Arabia on the one hand and regional balance of power between the Saudis and Shia Iran. In a statement on Sunday,the Saudi government said it stands with all its capabilities behind the state and the brotherly people of Bahrain. Some are reading the statement as a warning about a potential intervention by Riyadh to stabilise Bahrain.
Minority rights
As the Middle East struggles to break free from the old order,the question of minority rights religious and ethnic are bound to come to the fore. Most nations in the Middle East have significant minorities. These include Coptic Christians in Egypt,Sunnis and Zoroastrians in Iran and Shias in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,to name a few religious minorities.
Ethnic minorities include the Kurds in Iran,Iraq and Turkey,the Arabs in Israel,the Berbers in Algeria,Morocco and Libya,and the Baloch and the Azeri in Iran. There are geographic divides too as between the north and south in Yemen.
In putting down the minorities,the authoritarian rulers of the Middle East have manipulated the strong narrative of Arab nationalism and Islamic universalism,leveraged an unending conflict with Israel,aligned with conservative religious sentiment and mobilised anti-imperialist sentiment.
Those rulers who survive the current storm in the region and others who gather the reins of power will have a tougher time dealing with the potential assertion of minority rights across the region.
raja.mohan@expressindia.com
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