Saudi Crown Prince’s visit

The times have changed. Till recently, Saudi Arabia would go along with vitriolic Pakistani resolutions on Kashmir at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Visiting Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s commiserations over the Pulwama attack fell short of expectations. The Prince did not mention Pakistan, leave alone indicting it for cross-border terror like the Americans and the British usually do. Some renitence is understandable — Pakistan army serves as Riyadh’s Praetorian Guard, there are 20 lakh Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia, and for decades, the US-Saudi-Pakistan troika has acted in close concert to superimpose its foreign policy on the region. Nor do the Saudis have very clean hands, having involved themselves in backing non-state actors, from Afghanistan to Syria.

Despite these constraints, India’s success in breaking into the Saudi security calculus is laudable: there is an offer for real-time intelligence sharing, which was recently in evidence when Riyadh deported half a dozen Lashkar-e-Taiba suspects along with the prospect of a partnership in maritime security that matches with India’s desire to keep a military eye on its sea lanes of communication carrying bulk of its energy supplies. But more important is the move towards erecting formal structures for interaction on anti-terrorism and investment.

India has played its cards well to elicit a shift in the Saudi approach which could have implications for Pakistani behaviour, though Riyadh also stands diminished after its stalemate against the resource-strapped Houthis and the clumsy murder of a journalist in Turkey. But the catalyst may have been geo-economics. Mohammed has set his country on the path of modernisation — women can now drive, female preachers are encouraged and the Saudis are raring to enter downstream areas in petroleum overseas. India is among the eight countries identified for an expanding economic footprint with talk of $100 billion in investment. The Crown Prince also advised the Pakistanis about the need to gain from India’s economic resurgence, provided they had a ‘great leader’. The Saudis have come a long way. They not just condemned the Pulwama attack, but also denounced it. The lure of the market seems to be triumphing over brotherly love.