ISLAMABAD: Pakistani troops are already in Saudi Arabia and have been for decades, the military’s spokesman has told CNN, days after the Makkah defence alliance was invoked for the first time.
Asked whether Pakistani personnel were on the ground under the pact, Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said: “I can confirm that the forces of Pakistan are already there.”
He said the contingents belong to multiple capabilities and domains, and declined to go into operational detail, noting that such matters are not made public.
The alliance, he added, did not appear “in a vacuum”. It rests on long-standing diplomatic, political, military and people-to-people ties between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.
His remarks on Wednesday followed an emergency meeting of the alliance’s Strategic-Political and Defence Committee in Riyadh on October 5. The three members agreed to move the agreed forces and capabilities into the kingdom rapidly in response to attacks by Yemen’s Houthis.
The same meeting gave Pakistan the alliance’s top administrative post. Lt Gen (retd) Nauman Mahmood was named its first secretary-general for a three-year term.
Pakistan has repeatedly condemned the strikes, including an attempted drone attack on Makkah and a drone strike on a grid station in Madinah.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement was signed on August 7 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It treats an armed attack on one member as an attack on all three, and builds on the bilateral defence pact Islamabad and Riyadh concluded in September 2025.
Pakistani soldiers have served in the kingdom since long before either document, including a contingent sent to help defend it during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis.
Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said last week that more than six countries want to join the arrangement, which he described as purely defensive. Calls for more Muslim states to sign up have also come from parties at home. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has pledged that Pakistan will meet every obligation under it.
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