Imagine possessing a bag of gold. One may think oneself rich, but without the means to sell it, the gold remains a bulky object with practically no useful purpose or value to the owner. It only becomes a source of wealth with the ability to access a marketplace where it can be traded.

Likewise is the situation with the plethora of oil and gas fields of the wider Middle East region, where huge deposits are spread across numerous locations, predominately in the Gulf States, but also extending to the Caspian Sea basin. But deprived of the ability to export to global markets, the oil and gas would be rendered of minimal value.

However this is the prize that the US, specifically the American oil and gas corporate giants that control the US government, have managed to capture. Not only have these US companies managed to effectively take substantial ownership of much of these lucrative reserves through complex production share type agreements – but more crucially the US has managed to establish and secure direct trading routes for this oil and gas to the outside world. For example a sizable percentage of the world’s crude oil and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) flows from the Gulf States by a network of pipelines, feeding shipping tankers which in turn lumber down the Straits of Hormuz bottleneck and out through the Gulf of Oman, passing by regional hotspots such as Iran and Pakistan in the process.

In order to secure these routes, the US vociferously seeks to guard these waterways and pipelines – for this purpose it has military and naval bases spread across the states of the wider Middle East, with key deployments such as the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain. More critically however is the fact that the US has nurtured numerous local client states, where the leaderships of these countries have completely capitulated to the dictates of the US and hence execute its bidding at a moment’s notice to secure the US’s key interests in the region. The names on this ignominious list include the likes of regional heavyweights Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, as well as a longer list of smaller subjugated states – on paper many having tensions with one another, but in reality all obediently executing orders drafted in Washington.

The benefit brought to the US is not just through the wealth gained by the sale of the oil and gas, which is sold in the millions of barrels and billions of cubic feet per day respectively. But moreover there is a deeper and more resounding, albeit lesser understood, benefit the US reaps from by controlling both the oil and gas fields and their routes to the market. Namely the US controls the currency in which these vastly traded commodities are sold in to the rest of the world.

By enforcing the sale of the oil and gas in US Dollars, the US has managed to create a situation where approximately 65% of all global trade is now undertaken in this currency – and this is what gives the US Dollar its immense value. This in turn allows the US to print the US Dollar at will, whenever it is in the need of funds. In effect most of the world is forced to handover its physical goods and services to the US in return for these paper US Dollars.

For example, following the financial turbulent period from 2008, when banks and major companies were on the verge of collapse, the US government sanctioned the mass generation of fresh US Dollars. A process known as Quantitative Easing, during the two to three years that followed, the US created trillions of dollars and released these into circulation to its banks and corporate giants, bailing them out of their financial turmoil.

So the control of the wider Middle East oil and gas fields and their supply routes is of vital strategic importance to the US, as this indirectly allows it to generate an unlimited amount of wealth at will through the printing of the US Dollar. This is how the US has come to dominate the current economic world order and why it seeks to prevent any form of instability posed to it.

But as much as being a tremendous asset to the US, this also is its Achilles heel. For if any other power was to take ownership of these oil and gas fields and / or muscle in on the shipping lanes and supply pipelines, dominating them instead of the US, this would then spell an end to the US’s ability to generate wealth at will. This in turn will severely curtail American military might – at the moment the US channels a staggering $600bn annually to defence expenditure, more than four times the nearest rival China, which spends about $150bn per year.

Enter Pakistan – that actively plays an important role of regional henchman for the US. First in the eighties, Pakistan helped fight a proxy war for the US against the Soviet Union, which was eager to impose itself on this territory and drastically attenuate the US monetary control of the world. Afghanistan may have been the battlefield, but it was Pakistan that was the real command and control centre for the nine-year long war against the Soviet occupation forces.

Similarly today, there is a huge resurgence of Islamic feeling in the region, including Pakistan itself. Thus the Pakistani establishment has obediently turned its army against its own people in order to stamp out any support for resistance against the current day US occupation of Afghanistan, a key country in maintaining control over the oil and gas and further has silenced with brute force any dissenting voices within Pakistan calling for an end to the collusion with the US.

Despite this blind obedience shown by both the Pakistani civilian and military leaderships, the US is continuing to press Pakistan further. It now wishes to tap into Pakistan’s considerable, experienced and respected armed forces to venture further afield and secure its interests as far as Saudi Arabia and Syria, in order to quell any Islamic dissent within these key Middle Eastern countries under the pretext of fighting the highly dubious ‘Islamic State’ or ‘ISIS’, a mysterious militia which has only served US interests impeccably. Operation North Thunder, recently taken place in Saudi Arabia under the apparent leadership of the Saudis and in which the Pakistan army is now set to commit its forces to, is one such example of how the US desires to utilise the Pakistan army and other Muslim armies to fight their own brothers in Syria who have sincerely risen up against the tyrannical non-Muslim regime of Bashar Al Assad. In doing so, the Pakistan Army, along with the other armies, will be committing nothing short of a massive crime against Islam and the Muslims.

This is where the sincere in Pakistan – particularly in its armed forces – need to comprehend the grave situation before them, whilst at the same time appreciating the golden opportunity that presents itself. Since the country directly overlooks and has the ability to militarily dominate the Straits of Hormuz, Afghanistan and other key supply routes, this gifts Pakistan with the decisive say as to what can flow in and out of the region.

With the world’s sixth biggest and the Islamic world’s largest and further only nuclear armed military, Pakistan stands head and shoulders above the rest of the Muslim countries in terms of physical strength, for the possession of nuclear weapons, in conjunction with a well trained sizeable conventional force, is a game changer. And it has always been the reality within human nature that those in position of power are always looked up to and respected, as demonstrated by the fact that Gen Raheel Sharif, COAS of the Pakistan Army, is being urged to become the Commander-in-Chief of the thirty four Muslim nation military alliance being assembled in Saudi Arabia, supposedly to fight terrorism. Along with the fact that from Morocco to Indonesia the Muslims of Pakistan are admired for their Islamic fervour and dedication, the unique ability to command authority and leadership from across the Ummah, which eagerly seeks such direction, thus rests with Pakistan – but only under the right banner of an Islamic Khilafah ruling system.

Just as the first ever Islamic State, established by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself in the year 622, expanded rapidly to dominate most of the then civilised world within a hundred years, so too will the re-established Islamic State of the Khilafah upon the methodology of the Prophethood expand, but this time absorbing already majority Muslim lands, including powerful states like Iran, Turkey and Egypt, introducing the world to a new superpower in the process.

 

Asif Salahuddin