Silver or Lead?
Day 227. The offer the Colombian cartels made famous came in two metals, and the man across the table could take the silver, meaning the bribe, or the lead, meaning the bullet. It’s a boss’s offer and it rests on a bluff, because it only works for as long as everybody who hears it believes the lead will arrive and nobody makes the boss prove it.
Saudi Arabia has made both halves of that offer. The silver went mostly to Pakistan, which sent a squadron of about 16 fighter jets to the kingdom in April and by May had around 8,000 troops and a Chinese-made air-defense system there, with Saudi Arabia paying for the equipment, Reuters reported. On Apr 16, Saudi Arabia put $3B on deposit at Pakistan’s central bank and extended a $5B deposit that was already there, and on Aug 7 the two countries and Türkiye signed a pact in Mecca (the holy city in western Saudi Arabia) that treats an armed attack on one of them as an attack on all three. (Reuters via MarketScreener · Pakistan’s deployment, May 18; Xinhua via Capital FM · Saudi deposits, Apr 16; Reuters via Defense News · The pact and Fidan, Oct 8)
The lead went to Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition went to war in 2015 against Ansarallah, the movement that governs most of northwest Yemen, and bombed the country for seven years before a truce. The UN Development Programme estimated the war’s toll would reach 377,000 by the end of 2021, most of it from hunger and disease. The truce collapsed in July and the bombing started again, and the health ministry in Sanaa (Yemen’s capital), where Ansarallah still governs, counts 91 Yemenis killed by coalition strikes in the past five weeks. (AP via Christian Science Monitor · Sanaa’s count, Oct 11; UNDP · The war’s toll through 2021; The National · The 2022 truce, Oct 2)
Now the lead is coming back across the border, and it’s landing on the main airport in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia’s capital). On Saturday the question there was who’d still get on a plane, and two days later nobody can, because Saudi Arabia has closed the airport through this coming Saturday. Ansarallah’s missiles struck it four times in five days, hitting a passenger terminal on Saturday and the domestic terminals on Sunday, and killed at least 18 people. Reuters called Saturday’s strike the deadliest attack inside the kingdom in more than a decade. (Four Fingers News · Check with Your Airline, Oct 10; CNN · The closure and the US requests, Oct 12; Al Jazeera · Four strikes in five days, Oct 12; Al Jazeera · The toll at the airport, Oct 13; Reuters via PhilSTAR Life · Saturday’s strike, Oct 11)
That’s what it looks like when somebody calls the bluff, and once it’s called, the cards have to go on the table. Saudi Arabia laid its hand down a week ago today, when it invoked the pact and the three governments announced they’d move “the agreed military forces and capabilities” into the kingdom quickly. Two days later the New York Times quoted an unnamed senior Pakistani officer saying Pakistan’s jets were bombing Ansarallah, and within a day Pakistan’s information ministry called the story “fake and fabricated.” Türkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said Turkish troops won’t be sent to attack inside another country. The United States turned down two Saudi requests for strikes on Yemen last month, and its president says only that it “may” join now. (Anadolu · Joint statement, Oct 5; Express Tribune · Pakistan’s denial, Oct 9; Reuters via Defense News · The pact and Fidan, Oct 8; CNN · The closure and the US requests, Oct 12)
Silver can put another country’s soldiers on a base, and it can’t make that country want the war. Anybody who’s been handed a job they didn’t believe in knows how that job gets done, which is on time, by the book and not an inch past what the book requires. Pakistan shares a border with Iran, which supports Ansarallah, and its parliament voted unanimously in 2015 to stay out of Yemen while promising to defend Saudi territory, which is the promise its government is keeping to the letter this week. (Voice of America · Parliament’s vote, April 2015)
The hand that’s face up on the table holds friends who took the silver and won’t fight the war in Yemen, and an enemy that took the lead for years and is now sending it back.