Wikileaks Casualty: Saudi-Pakistani Relations Strained After Documents Released

Forget the bow, Obama may want to kiss King Abdullah’s shoes next time he sees him.

Thanks to the Wikileaks’ document dump, Pakistan’s ties with Saudi Arabia appeared to be under fresh strain.
CBS reported:

Pakistan’s ties with Saudi Arabia appeared to be under fresh strain on Monday in the wake of revelations from classified documents released by WikiLeaks, which quoted Saudi Arabian King Abdullah calling Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari “the greatest obstacle” to the country’s progress.

“When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body,” Abdullah said of Zardari in one of the documents.

While Pakistani officials publicly condemned the claim as an attempt to undermine the traditionally close ties between the two countries, western and Arab diplomats warned that the revelations may have finally exposed genuine underlying tensions.

Both are prominent Islamic states: Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil producer and the birthplace of Islam while Pakistan has the distinction of being the world’s only Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons.

Pakistan’s relations with Saudi Arabia predate its birth in 1947, when the country was carved out as an independent state from British colonial India. And many Pakistanis – like Muslims in all countries – feel tied to Saudi Arabia because of the traditional Islamic pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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