Pakistan struggles with Yemen coalition dilemma

Pakistan faces an unenviable dilemma -- whether to join a Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen or stay out and risk angering its old ally which provides it with huge financial support.
Pakistan, currently the Islamic world's only nuclear power, has provided military aid and expertise to the Gulf kingdom for decades and enjoyed cheap oil and massive financial help in return.
In addition, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has close personal ties to the Saudi royal family, so Pakistan might have seemed like an obvious candidate to join the coalition of Arab states.
But the government has held back, in part because it finds itself torn between its old ally and its neighbour, Iran, the major Shiite power, which is furious at the Yemen assault.

Islamabad says it will defend Saudi "territorial integrity" but insists no troops or equipment have been sent yet and maintains Pakistan will not take part in any conflict that divides the Muslim world along sectarian lines.
The coalition fight to end the Huthi rebels' uprising against President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has sent tensions between the Sunni Arab coalition and Shiite Iran soaring.

Sectarian violence has soared in largely Sunni Pakistan in recent years, most of it targeting Shiites, who make up 20 percent of the population.
Umair Javed, an analyst and writer, said Islamabad would be wary of committing to military action that might embolden already fearsome Sunni militant groups at home.

"Even though this conflict isn't overtly sectarian it might be presented as sectarian within Pakistan -- groups that are hostile to Iran and to Shiites in Pakistan will present it as a conflict between Sunnis and Shiites," he told AFP.
Military ties between the two countries date back to the 1960s, when Pakistan helped Riyadh build up its air force and supplied pilots to fly sorties against a South Yemeni incursion into the kingdom in 1969, US security expert and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel wrote in a Brookings Institution article.
In the 1980s Riyadh, along with the US, funnelled vast sums of money through Pakistan to fund the Afghan mujahideen's fight against Soviet occupation.

Cooperation and financial assistance has continued to flow from Riyadh, in the form of cheap oil and loans, including one of USD 1.5 billion last year.
When Sharif was ousted in a military coup in 1999, it was Saudi Arabia that received him in exile.
But despite this history, there has been considerable resistance in Pakistani media this week to joining what is seen by many as a "foreign" war, with a bitter fight against terror outfits still going on at home.
The military is busy with a major operation against Pakistani Taliban hideouts in the tribal northwest, on top of maintaining a heavy presence along the border with arch-foe India, and some argue its resources are too stretched to contribute in Yemen.