Musharraf: From favorite to fall
guy By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad's eight-hour trip to Saudi Arabia last
weekend to meet with King Abdullah dealt a body
blow to US efforts to drive a wedge between the
Persians and the Arabs. Plans to create a Sunni
bloc to isolate and oppose an Iran-dominated
Shi'ite "crescent" have also been derailed.
And Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf has come out of the whole episode with
egg on his face.
Lieutenant-General Hamid
Gul, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence who maintains close ties with Riyadh
and
Tehran, told Asia Times Online
that he believes Musharraf's meddling in Middle
Eastern affairs has further isolated the general.
Apart from anything else, Ahmadinejad's visit
rattled some nerves in Jerusalem. Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni commented, "Ahmadinejad is a
leader who denies the Holocaust, who tells the
Jews to go back to Europe, talks of a vision of
wiping Israel off the map. He should not be
accepted as a member of the international
community. Now he is being received in Saudi
Arabia."
Over the past few months,
Pakistan, a founder member of the United States'
axis against terrorism formed after September 11,
2001, has emerged as a new proxy for Washington on
the world stage.
Islamabad recently hosted
a meeting of the foreign ministers of six other
members of the Organization of Islamic Conference
(OIC) - Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey,
Malaysia and Indonesia - Sunni Muslim countries
subscribing to what Musharraf calls "enlightened
moderation". This came after Musharraf had visited
the pro-American states of the Persian Gulf and
the Middle East.
The formation of this
core group was a Saudi idea, which included the
formation of a multinational Muslim peacekeeping
force from OIC countries. But Pakistan's spin on a
resolution of the Palestinian issue was sensed by
all, including Saudi Arabia, as a US ploy, and
very quickly the dynamics of the game changed.
"The immense popularity of the Iranian
president and Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrullah among
Arab youths was a matter of concern for Arab
monarchs, but it does not mean that they will be
part of any American designs in the Middle East,"
Gul told Asia Times Online.
"The entire
Saudi plan of a peacekeeping force and resolution
of the Israel-Palestine conflict was one
perspective, but the Americans tried to hijack the
plan through Egypt and Pakistan," Gul said.
"The spirit of the Saudi Middle East peace
plan was the three-point agenda of King Abdullah
when he was crown prince in which he demanded that
Israel withdraw to its position before 1967 [the
Six Day War]. Jerusalem would be the capital of
the Palestinian state. If these demands were
accepted, Israel would be accepted as a secular
democratic state in the Middle East. But the
Israelis did not accept all these points.
"That was the crux of the whole matter,
but the Americans meddled through Pakistan and
Egypt and hijacked the whole agenda by turning it
into [creating] a Sunni bloc and the recognition
of Israel. The scheme was exposed because of
General Pervez Musharraf's haste when, during his
Middle Eastern visit, he held a press conference
in the UAE [United Arab Emirates] and said that
Israel is a reality and it would be better for it
to be recognized by the Islamic world. This
exposed the designs for a 'Sunni bloc' to cater to
the American agenda.
"Arab leaders were
stunned by Musharraf's remarks, and King Abdullah
went out of his way in a newspaper interview to
embarrass Musharraf by saying that Palestine is
purely 'our' issue and nobody needs to meddle in
the area with their own agenda," Gul said.
Gul maintains that the theory of creating
a Shi'ite-Sunni divide was developed by US
think-tanks such as the Rand Corporation and is a
figment of their imagination.
"The
Iranians never tried to export Shi'ite ideology.
The reasons for sectarian tensions are different
and purely local in each society. Imam [ayatollah
Ruhollah] Khomeini was completely against the idea
of concentrating on the Shi'ite school [of Islam]
and once said that as Shi'ites were 6% of the
whole Muslim ummah, if Iran tried to
concentrate on Shi'ites only, it would not work.
Al-Qaeda is also pan-Islamist, and pan-Islamists
would never go for a narrow definition of their
ideologies like Salafism," said Gul.
"Any
US aggression on Iran would be a litmus test of
pan-Islamism, and jihadis all over the world would
join hands with Iran against America. And Iran
never back-stabbed al-Qaeda. Pakistan has caught
over 700 al-Qaeda members and handed them over to
the Americans. The Iranians did not hand anybody
to the Americans. Osama bin Laden's families
crossed through Iran, Saiful Adil and other
important al-Qaeda leaders crossed through Iran,
and nobody was bothered, because Iran is a
follower of pan-Islamicism and not of any narrow
sectarian definition," said Gul.
"The
whole American scheme has been exposed, and
Musharraf and [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak
fell flat on their faces after the Iranian
president was received with open arms in Riyadh.
Now Musharraf should sort out his options, as he
has already lost his Afghan card to the Americans
and his significance is only to guard against
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into anybody's
hand who would use it against Israel," Gul said.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia
Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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