[NYTr] A Tale of Two Haj's

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[China Hand is paying attention. As he says, for the most part, the US
press is completly missing, or ignoring, some very significant
developments as Middle Eastern governments move ahead on their own,
discounting the increasingly marginal, hapless incompetent US. -NYTr] 

excerpted from China Matters - Dec 21, 2007
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/12/tale-of-two-hajs.html

A Tale of Two Hajs

One happened, the other didn’t.

by China Hand

Together, they shed some light on the nature of Saudi Arabia’s
involvement in Middle East affairs.

The first was something of a foreign affairs bombshell: Saudi Arabia’s
invitation to Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to join this year’s haj...an
invitation that Ahmadinejad accepted with alacrity.

>From the Teheran Times:

Saudi King Abdullah invited Ahmadinejad to attend the annual pilgrimage
when he participated in the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC)
summit in Doha on November 30. It is the first time that an Iranian
president is formally invited to attend the Hajj pilgrimage.

The standard narrative in America is that Sunni Saudi Arabia and
Shi’ite Iran are implacable opponents, using their oil revenues to fuel
a battle for hegemony in the Middle East.


Well, maybe not.

Nevertheless, Muslims and their quaint but icky and intimidating
rituals—as well as the possibility for normalized relations between
Iran and any pro-Western state—are so far from the U.S. consciousness
that the confusing factor of a haj olive branch from Saudi Arabia to
Iran—and its acceptance--hasn’t been adequately covered in the U.S.
press.

It’s all over the Middle East news services, of course, and in the U.K.
the Beeb, indeed, took note:

An official said the invitation was an important event in Saudi-Iranian
ties.

"It is the first time in the history of relations between Iran and
Saudi Arabia that the king of this country invites a president of the
Islamic republic to make the pilgrimage to Mecca," said presidential
aide Ali Akbar Javanfekr.

Since Stratfor and I agree, I will quote from them:

Given the ethnic, sectarian and geopolitical tensions between the two
nations, a Saudi monarch inviting an Iranian head of state to make the
Hajj is a major development. ... Since the Saudis are conferring an
honor upon the Iranians that would not have happened unless the two
sides had reached -- or are close to reaching -- a modus vivendi on
Iraq and other issues, Ahmadinejad's trip represents a sort of
political Hajj.

The analysis makes some good points about Iran’s promising efforts—with
apparent U.S. acquiescence--to achieve recognition as a regional power
with legitimate as well as significant interests in the Middle East.

The only U.S. outlet that seemed to take notice of this major event in
Middle East affairs was the Christian Science Monitor.

The subtitle of its report--Are US Arab allies playing 'good cop' with
Ahmadinejad to US 'bad cop'?--indicates to me that the Monitor is
regurgitating the line planted courtesy of Condoleezza Rice and the
realist foreign policy team, meant to obfuscate the fundamental
realignment of Middle East affairs that is taking place and provide
political cover by claiming that we are merely pursuing the traditional
route of confrontation with Iran in new, skillful, and inexpressibly
subtle ways.

Whether the Saudis are leading a paralyzed U.S. foreign policy
establishment (my opinion) or following an enlightened U.S. realpolitik
line on Iran policy is still an open question, but undoubtedly the
Saudis are energetically pursuing rapprochement with Teheran...and
Teheran is responding.

The second haj invitation was more of a damp squib.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador visited deposed [Pakistani] Supreme Court
chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry at his residence (where he’s under house
arrest) to invite him to join the haj.

Chaudhry firmly declined:

ISLAMABAD, Dec 7: Saudi Ambassador Ali Awadh Al-Asseri met deposed
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry at his heavily-guarded
official residence here on Friday. Justice Iftikhar has been under
house arrest since the imposition of emergency on Nov 3.

Although there was no official word on the deposed chief justice’s
first meeting with a foreign diplomat, there were rumours that the
ambassador had delivered a message from the government with an offer
that he would be duly accommodated if he withdrew the demand for
reinstating the judges who had not taken the oath under the Provisional
Constitution Order.

According to a source close to Justice Iftikhar’s family, during the
hour-long meeting, the Saudi envoy also extended an invitation to him
to perform Haj which the latter politely declined, saying that his
presence in the country was necessary in the current situation.
Political observers are attaching great significance to the meeting,
keeping in view the reported role played by the Saudi government in
facilitating the return of Nawaz Sharif to Pakistan.

Mr Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, it may be mentioned, had not been allowed
to meet the deposed chief justice.

Chaudhry is the individual at the heart of Pakistan’s judge-and-lawyer
driven democracy movement—as opposed to the faux democratic hackery
known as the January 8 parliamentary elections being conducted by
Pervez Musharraf with the enthusiastic participation of Benazir Bhutto
and Nawaz Sharif and under the eye of the United States.

The most blatant and fundamental pieces of extralegal flummery to date
in Pakistan have been Musharraf’s attempt to imprison Chaudhry on
trumped-up charges earlier this year and, when that didn’t work, Mush’s
effort to remove, under the guise of a state of national emergency,
both Chaudhry and the activist and pro-democracy Supreme Court he
led--just as it was poised to disallow Musharraf's election back in
November (Musharraf, in violation of the constitution, had run for his
second term as president while as a uniformed officer).

Letting Musharraf keep the presidency he won illegally is critical to
the deal as understood by Musharraf, Bhutto, and the United States, and
so is turning a blind eye toward the rape of the supreme court and a
cocking a deaf ear toward the calls that the deposed judges be
reinstated.

It was assumed that the Saudis were trying use a haj to sweettalk or
armtwist Chaudhry into abandoning his uncompromising stance on
Musharraf’s illegal presidency, and forestall an overall upsetting of
the political applecart by the intransigent judiciary.

Some quarters saw the invitation simply as a gift to Musharraf and a
way out of the constitutional and legal dilemma he clumsily constructed
for himself.

Others saw the invite giving Saudi Arabia’s favorite, Nawaz Sharif a
way out of the corner he has painted himself into-- Sharif has staked
out a (relatively) extreme position, insisting on restoration of the
judiciary—and fully re-enter into Pakistan’s political life after the
parliamentary elections.

In any case, the invitation was roundly condemned as an example of
Saudi interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs.

Whatever the motivation, the invitation didn’t take, seemingly
establishing Pakistan’s secular, middle-class democratic movement
outside the conservative Muslim discourse Saudi Arabia prefers, and
demonstrating the awkward and dangerous disconnect between Pakistan’s
corrupted political process and the increasingly militant and alienated
democratic movement.

Dawn reported:

According to the source, Justice Iftikhar told the Saudi ambassador
that he considered himself the rightful chief justice and the first
thing he would do at the end of his detention would be to go to and sit
in the Supreme Court. He said that he was ready to render any sacrifice
or to wage struggle for the just cause of independence of the judiciary
and restoration of the pre-PCO judiciary. Despite all the difficulties,
the chief justice said, judges and lawyers would not abandon their
struggle for independence of the judiciary.

Middle East security policy is undergoing a major realignment.

Whether it’s driven by U.S. realpolitik, Saudi Arabia’s desire to move
beyond the rhetoric of the global war on terror to a doctrine based on
conservative Muslim-oriented regimes distancing themselves from the
U.S. and therefore (hopefully) more stable, or inchoate non-aligned
democratization remains to be seen.

But in any case, Saudi Arabia’s haj diplomacy may be recognized as a
turning point.

[A much more detailed and interesting discussion of Pakistan's political
situation follows ... - NYTr]