Makkah moment
THERE is no disputing that the coming together of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye comes at a critical juncture for West Asia, even if several aspects around the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement’s precise operationalisation remain unclear.
There are good reasons for Islamabad to view this as a significant strategic opportunity. The arrangement, forged in the shadow of the US and Israeli war on Iran, responds to a growing imperative for regional stakeholders to exercise greater control in stabilising a region fractured by conflict.
It also builds on long-standing relationships between three important middle powers whose security is bound up in regional outcomes. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have decades of military and diplomatic cooperation behind them. Turkiye has important extensive defence ties with both. With US retrenchment from the region increasingly appearing inevitable, institutionalising these relationships offers some much-needed strategic coherence to a region beset by complex challenges.
But for Pakistan to make the most of this moment — and for it to translate the compact into lasting strategic advantage — several caveats deserve consideration.
First, for this ‘non-directional’ arrangement to truly be regionally tenable, it must avoid becoming a source of further division in the Middle East. For Pakistan, the present crisis involving Ansarullah (the Houthis) in the Red Sea offers an early test of whether the alliance can resist being drawn into the region’s existing rivalries. There is no disputing the fact that the stability of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia matters enormously to Pakistan: it is an important source of energy and financial support, and home to a large Pakistani diaspora whose remittances contribute significantly to foreign exchange earnings.
The strategic opportunity comes with caveats.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also dramatically increased Pakistan’s dependency on the flow of oil through the Red Sea. But direct military involvement against the Houthis does risk drawing the alliance deeper into existing regional rivalries, risking Islamabad’s position with Tehran, and testing Pakistan’s stated policy commitment to avoiding camp politics. Ultimately, Pakistan’s usefulness to the alliance might lie in its ability to exploit the diplomatic space it retains with both Tehran and Riyadh, using those channels to encourage dialogue and de-escalation.
Second, in terms of objectives, military coordination, defence-industrial cooperation and, ultimately, collective defence are not incompatible with one another. But it is that final commitment, however, that will require the most careful thinking about where Pakistan’s obligations to the other two countries begin and end. A decade ago, in 2015, Pakistan’s parliament played an important role in the decision not to commit Pakistani troops to the Saudi-led war in Yemen. While the intervening decade has arguably seen an erosion of Pakistan’s democratic institutions, the country’s leaders must still remember that major commitments abroad still require political dialogue and consensus at home, not least given the country’s demographic diversity and the ability of external security choices to reverberate internally.
Finally, and relatedly, those shaping Pakistan’s strategic direction would be wise to recognise that Pakistan’s expanding strategic horizons cannot be divorced from the pressures it confronts at home and that while there is no arguing that regional influence can be an asset, it is important to build the domestic capacity to sustain. At present, Pakistan confronts a serious trifecta of terrorism, political instability and persistent economic fragility. This year has been among Pakistan’s deadliest for terrorism in recent memory. Fraught governance challenges in KP and Balochistan add to that insecurity. For a country already contending with multiple sources of instability at home, expanding commitments abroad without thought to improved governance and/or a corresponding domestic reset at home risks weakening the very foundations on which any newfound regional influence must ultimately rest.
None of these caveats detracts from the rare opportunity Makkah presents. In the shadow of looming threats from India and Afghanistan, and general instability unleashed by America’s war in Iran, the arrangement offers Pakistan the chance to do several things: to extract strategic currency from its military capacity, to expand defence-industrial cooperation with important partners, and to eventually be a consequential voice in shaping whatever security architecture emerges from the ashes of the US war against Iran. But these things also require more than aspiration. For Islamabad, that means navigating existing regional fault lines and developing a better political compact at home.
The writer is assistant professor of political science, Tufts University.
Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026
