海角大神

News that hasn't hit the headlines - yet聽

Pakistan announced last week that it received a $1.5 billion grant from Saudi Arabia, which it termed a 鈥渇riendly gift鈥� and an 鈥渦nconditional grant.鈥�

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have long had warm ties, but the no-strings-attached gift sparked immediate concern from Pakistani journalists, security experts, and opposition politicians, who question whether the grant is part of a behind-the-scenes deal for Pakistan to provide weapons for Syrian rebels.

鈥淭here are no free lunches in foreign diplomacy,鈥� says Baqir Sajjad, a journalist at Pakistan鈥檚 Dawn newspaper, which has published articles questioning the deal. 聽

The grant was confirmed at a briefing by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif鈥檚 advisor on national security and foreign affairs, who also said that Saudi Arabia had agreed to purchase weapons from Pakistan.聽

The Pakistan government declined to specify what kind of weapons the Kingdom was looking for and denied that any arms purchased by Saudi Arabia will be sent to Syria. Pakistan, which has the sixth-largest army in the world, is known as a major arms importer, but it also sells fighter jets, anti-tank missiles, armored personal carriers,聽and small arms to Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Malaysia.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense expert based in Islamabad, says that Saudi Arabia 鈥� who is desperate to counter arch-rival Iran鈥檚 support for the Syrian regime and has publicly called for arming Syrian rebels 鈥� may want to buy weapons from Pakistan rather than other countries because Pakistan cannot enforce an agreement about where the arms end up.

鈥淚f the arms bought from the West were supplied to Syrian rebels and the sellers like the United States or other such countries found out, they would be able impose sanctions on the Saudis,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut Pakistan has no such leverage over the Saudis if they violate the agreement鈥� because the government is cash-strapped and worried that US foreign aid will diminish once American troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

The disclosure of the grant and weapons agreement follows a series of high-level talks between Pakistan and Saudi Arabian officials over the past three months and Pakistan's break last month from its neutral stance on the Syrian civil war. It said for the first time that the Assad regime should step down.聽

There is no proof that Pakistan鈥檚 decisions are the direct result of Saudi Arabia鈥檚 actions 鈥� or that its arms will reach Syria. Even if they did, 鈥渢here are so many arms coming from so many different places,鈥� says Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington in an e-mail. 鈥淯nless the level of Pakistani arms shipments reaches some sort of critical mass, I don鈥檛 see them being any kind of game-changer for the conflict.鈥澛�

The consequences of Pakistani arms sent to Syria 鈥渃ould be destabilizing for sure,鈥� Mr. Kugelman says, though more so for Pakistan than for the Middle East. The risk is that 鈥淧akistan's already-raging sectarian violence would worsen. And its battlefield role in the ongoing Iran-Saudi Arabia sectarian proxy war would grow ever more strong,鈥� he says.

At home, Pakistan is struggling with its Sunni-Shiite violence and ongoing strife from the Pakistan Taliban鈥檚 insurgency. There were 687 sectarian killings in Pakistan last year, an increase of 22 percent from 2012, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. Violence between Sunni Muslims (about 75 percent of the population) and Shiites (15 to 20 percent) has never reached massive levels, but there鈥檚 concern that it鈥檚 on the rise.聽