THIS refers to the report ‘Makl(ah Defence Alliance to be institutionalised, Pakistan to head secretariat for 3 years: FO’ (Aug 31). The trilateral agreement signed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye has been prematurely dubbed by many as an ‘Islamic Nato’. There is another historical comparison that we would do well to remember: the Central Treaty Organisation (Cento), a Cold War-era military alliance of which Pakistan chose to be a member.
Article I of the 1955 Baghdad Pact, which subsequently became Cento, had not defined its purpose as protection against Soviet or communist aggression.
It stated simply that the contracting parties would ‘cooperate for their security and defence’ The 1958 declaration reaffirming the pact went further, committing its members to maintaining their collective security and resisting ‘aggression, direct or indirect’. Yet, Western powers subsequently treated the arrangement essentially as part of the Cold War containment of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Pal(istan, whose principal security concern was India, understoodits obligations differently.
The disagreement was hardly hidden.
Addressing the Cento ministerial meeting in Washington in April 1964, foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto described Cento’s vital function as preserving the independence and integrity of its members and protecting them against ‘all aggressions’ Contemporary reports noted explicitly that while the United States interpreted Cento as a shield against possible communist aggression, Pal(istan considered the Cento protection applicable to aggression from India as well. The consequences of that divergence in interpretation became apparent when Pakistan went to war with India the following year in 1965.
There is a rather obvious lesson here forthe Makkah Defence Alliance. Pal(istan’s principal external security concern remains its eastern border. The circumstances surrounding the new agreement, however, are overwhelmingly rooted in the security environment of the Middle East and Gulf.
The agreement provides that an armed attack upon any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack upon all.
The foreign minister of Turkiye is said to have reportedly described this provision as technically equivalent to Nato’s Article 5.
If that conclusion is correct, an obvious question follows: does this Article 5-type commitment apply equally and unequivocally to an armed attack against Pakistan,irrespective oftheidentity of the aggressor? India remains Pal(istan’s principal security concern, while instability along its western borders, in the shape of Indian proxies, could also produce circumstances in which the meaning of a collective defence commitment might be tested.
History suggests that the important question is not merely what an agreement says, but whether all its signatories understand those words to mean the same thing. Would an attack upon Pal(istan create precisely the same obligations for Saudi Arabia and Turkiye as an attack upon Saudi Arabia arising from a Middle Eastern conflict would create for Pakistan? If the answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’, the agreement represents an important new security guarantee for Pal(istan.
If it is not, Pakistan risks repeating an old mistake: accepting collective defence obligations defined by the security concerns of others, while discovering, when its own security is threatened, that its partners had understood those obligations rather differently.
Pakistan’s bitter experience with Cento should at least persuade policymakers to asl(the question now, rather than post-event.
Khalid Khan Lahore