ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Is hafte Arab News ko diye gaye Pakistan ke fauji tarjuman ke interview mein aik lafz ne asal kaam kiya, aur unhon ne yeh yaqeeni banaya ke koi ise nazarandaz na kar sake. Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry ne kaha ke Pakistan Saudi Arabia ke saath sifarati taur par bhi aur jismani taur par bhi khara hai, aur phir ruk kar doosre adverb par khud zor diya. Hum kisi bhi hadd tak jayenge. Aise khitte mein jahan ahalkar mahinon se aise alfaz chun rahe hain jo unhein kam se kam cheezon ka paband banayein, yeh aik inhiraf tha.
Is lamhe ko saaf goi darkar thi. Houthi missiles aur drones kai hafton se Saudi shehron ke upar aa rahe hain, aur nishane musalsal aise hote gaye hain jinhein nazarandaz karna mushkil hai. Saudi qiyadat mein qaaim ittehad ne khabar di ke Makkah ke gird mamnoo fazai hudood ki taraf barhte hue aik drone ko tabah kar diya gaya, aisi lakeer jise Muslim dunya mein koi bhi aam baat nahin samajh sakta. Iraq se aaye drones ne East-West Pipeline ke teen pumping stations ko nishana banaya, jis se woh raasta band ho gaya jo Hormuz par bharosa na hone ki surat mein Saudi khaam tel Red Sea tak pahunchata hai. Juma ko yeh charhao dar-ul-hukumat tak pahunch gaya, jahan Riyadh ke Olaya district mein dhamakon ki khabrein aayin aur Civil Defence ne poore shehr mein mumkina khatre ki tanbeehein jari keen aur phir khatam kar dein. Yeh ab Yemen mein jari koi door ka tanaza nahin raha.
Tarjuman ke alfaz ko jo wazan deta hai woh yeh hai ke Pakistan pahunchne ki pesh-kash nahin kar raha. Woh pehle se wahin maujood hai. Reuters ne May mein khabar di ke Islamabad ne Saudi saltanat mein taqreeban 8 hazar ahalkar, JF-17 fighters ka aik squadron, drones aur HQ-9 air defence system tainaat kar diya hai. Air defence hi woh salahiyat hai jo ab dabao mein hai. Associated Press ne is hafte khabar di ke Riyadh ne kai ittehadiyon se rabta kiya hai, jab ke us ke interceptor zakhire dabao mein aa rahe hain, aur Pakistan ka hissa koi aisa wada nahin jis ke poora hone ka intizar ho, balke aisa saaz-o-saman hai jo pehle se apni jagah par maujood hai.
The comparison is instructive. According to the same reporting, Saudi Arabia approached Pakistan, Britain, France and Egypt. Of the four, Pakistan is the one whose forces are already stationed in the Kingdom, the one whose commitment is written into a treaty, and the one that has stated its position publicly and without qualification. That combination is not available to the others, and it is not the product of this month. It rests on a presence built over decades and an alliance that was formalised in Makkah before the current wave of attacks began. In alliance politics such things are noticed, and they are remembered in Riyadh long after a crisis has passed.
The architecture behind the commitment is new enough that its edges are still being drawn. The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement holds that an armed attack on Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Turkey is an attack on all three, building on the 2025 bilateral agreement that says the same of Pakistan and the Kingdom. The operational annexes of neither document are public. What constitutes an armed attack, what response it obliges, and through what mechanism the three decide, are questions that will have to be settled between the signatories. That work is normal for a young alliance. It is also urgent, because the first crisis is a poor place to begin defining terms.
One element of the guarantee has been described differently at different times. Asked whether Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent forms part of what has been extended, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry neither confirmed nor denied it. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said after the 2025 agreement that Pakistan’s nuclear capability could be available to the Kingdom if needed, and later told Reuters that nuclear weapons were not within the agreement’s scope. Ambiguity has a respectable place in deterrence and can be deliberate. It serves its purpose best, though, when it is a single settled formulation that every official uses, rather than a series of individual answers that have to be reconciled afterwards.
What makes Pakistan’s position distinctive is that it is doing something no other party to this can do. It has committed itself to the Kingdom’s defence while remaining the only state both Washington and Tehran have been willing to let mediate between them, a role that produced the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding in June before the talks stalled. Field Marshal Asim Munir spoke by telephone this week to Iran’s foreign minister during his visit to Beijing. Pakistan has carried a Saudi message to Tehran asking it to use its influence with the Houthis. Guarantor to one party and channel to the other is an unusual combination, and holding both will take more effort as each becomes more credible.
Ankara has been alive to the same difficulty. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week that Iran is not the target of the Makkah arrangement, and that no state which refrains from aggression against the three has anything to fear from it. That is the right message and there is no reason to doubt it is meant. Whether it is accepted in Tehran will be determined by what the alliance does rather than by what its members say about it.
It would be a mistake to read any of this as a country pulled into someone else’s war by a treaty signed a fortnight ago. The relationship with Saudi Arabia is eight decades old, carried by governments and by the millions of Pakistanis who work in the Kingdom and send home the remittances that hold up the external account. Pakistani troops have been stationed there before. The Makkah agreement wrote down an arrangement that already existed, and the spokesman this week described it in plainer language than officials usually permit themselves.
