Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is on his way to Washington to attend the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace on 19 February. Many in Pakistan had begun to whisper about whether Sharif would shake hands with Benjamin Netanyahu. They were relieved by the news that the Israeli Prime Minister will not be attending the meeting. While this is part of the problem solved, the actual issue remains—what will Pakistan do if and when asked to deploy its troops in Gaza?
This also partly explains the constant travelling of Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Chief of Defense Forces, especially around the Middle East—from Muscat and Saudi Arabia to Jordan and UAE—before he joins Sharif in Washington. The PM will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and a few officials from the Foreign Office.
However, many of the Pakistani observers that I spoke with believe that Islamabad is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea —it cannot say no to Trump’s plan to use Pakistani troops as part of the stabilisation force but it cannot agree to commit either. It would be tantamount to deploying its military to police Gaza and serve Israel’s interests. This would certainly not be popular among the Pakistani people and even parts of the armed forces. Initially too eager to rebuild ties with Washington, Munir seems to have hurriedly jumped into the fray by committing his troops, which he now has to rethink. Some people I spoke with were of the view that Trump was impressed by Pakistan’s performance during the war in South Asia and believes that this force can do his job in Gaza.
Munir’s extensive traveling in the Middle East looks to be partly aimed at developing a consensus among the Muslim states and evolving a strategy to deal with this dilemma. The preference is to follow Saudi Arabia, which seems likely to finance the Board of Peace, but has demanded a concrete plan of action from the US including a timeline and answer to some specific questions such as a clear plan of action regarding the de-weaponisation of Hamas Most Arab states are willing to join the stabilisation force for peacebuilding.
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Pakistan’s Middle East ambitions
The situation that Pakistan faces is far more complex than what the Army GHQ initially imagined when it committed to joining the peace efforts. It looked like Munir had two broad objectives in mind. First, to become a player in Middle East politics, a plan that he had initially inherited from his predecessor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Munir has gone a step further—imagining a role in the Middle East that included sorting out the issue in Gaza.
Second, his understanding seems to be that by extending his role in the Middle East, a region that he believes he understands better than anyone else in Pakistan, he could prove himself useful to Donald Trump. Thus, enhancing Pakistan’s significance for the US.
But the plan suffered from serious limitations from the word go. The growing tension in the Middle East, which included conflict in Gaza, worsening US-Iran relations, and a factional fight between the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, posed natural limitations to any ambitions that the Pakistani field marshal may have had.
Any policy that may appear to help Israel may not be welcomed among Munir’s own constituency. He definitely cannot afford to appease Israel or build relations with Tel Aviv which his predecessor, General Musharraf could do. Pakistan’s former Army Chief had dispatched his foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri to meet his Israeli counterpart in Turkey and started a debate in the country regarding the possibility of initiating diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv. A senior diplomatic source I spoke with claimed that even then ISI chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, was on board regarding the meeting between the two foreign ministers but such support did not extend to establishing bilateral relations. Apparently, Kiyani’s objective was to initiate a dialogue with Israel in order to cool down the anti-Pakistan temperature in the US. While Musharraf may have been more open to the idea to establish communication, if not full-fledged ties, his generals were divided.
Any attraction toward the idea was driven by the impact it may have on Pakistan-US ties and, to some extent, neutralising Israel as far as India was concerned.
Pakistan’s generals, in the past, have been concerned about New Delhi and Tel Aviv coming together to pose a threat to Islamabad’s nuclear programme. In 1984, for example, there were rumours regarding Israeli air force fighter jets landing in India with the objective of targeting Kahuta research laboratories. Such apprehension had increased especially after the 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak.
One could argue that obtaining technological support from Israel was also an attractive option. There were instances in the past when military technology was procured from Israel. American-Iranian author, Alex Vatanka has written in his book, Iran and Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy and American Influence, about Islamabad acquiring weapons during the Bhutto regime from Israel through the Shah of Iran. Some Pakistani sources also mention acquisition of some technology during General Zia’s days. There have possibly been more recent interactions between the Pakistan and Israel military such as during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in which Turkey, Pakistan and Israel had supported the former.
None of these interactions had the potential of leading to something more, definitely nothing dramatic especially after October 2023. Despite his seeming control over Pakistan’s politics and the military, Munir cannot afford to make his own cadre anxious with any decision where he is seen as serving Israel’s interests. It was not too long ago in 2019 when Pakistan’s then naval chief, Admiral Zafar Mahmood Abbasi, had made an apocalyptic speech talking about Pakistan’s military playing a role in fighting the last and decisive war against the Jews and Christians. This idea was popularised by jihadi leaders like Masood Azhar, leader of the extremist Jaish-e-Muhammad. One is not sure how many military men believe in this mythology. What’s for sure is that even the money may not help build a consensus within the armed forces about playing a role that would aid Tel Aviv.
Surely, Netanyahu is conscious of the risk of letting Turkey and Pakistan play a role, which is why Tel Aviv continues to have objection to these two countries playing a role in the stabilisation force.
For Pakistan, the only hope of getting out of the bind is the possibility that the Board of Peace and Trump’s plans may not take off at all. Given the fact that Netanyahu has continued to raise the temperature by taking control of the West Bank to appease his ultra-Right wing to make gains in the coming elections in Israel, the group of Middle Eastern states would resist deployment in the absence of clarity. Pakistan’s delegation will likely sit through the meeting under the shadow of its Arab partners and not play a role on its own.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a senior fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)