Mecca Pact Activated: Pakistan, Turkey Deploy Forces to Saudi Arabia

For the first time since it was signed in August, the Mecca Pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey has formally taken effect. At an emergency meeting in Riyadh on Monday, the pact's high committee agreed to deploy Pakistani and Turkish forces to the kingdom, as Saudi Arabia backs an offensive against Houthi forces in Yemen.

In a joint statement released by Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, the committee "decided to move immediately to the actual deployment of collective defence commitments and to take the necessary measures to provide the agreed forces and military capabilities, ensuring rapid deployment in the Kingdom, in line with approved arrangements and the national laws of the parties." The statement did not specify the size or precise role of the forces.

Brigadier General Turki al-Malki, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said 100 fighter jets were supporting the Yemeni government's counteroffensive to retake territory seized by Houthi forces last month.

Hours after the meeting, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said his country's forces had joined in. "Turkish and Pakistani forces are playing a supporting role. We are certainly involved in reconnaissance and similar tasks, but the actual fighting is being carried out by Saudi Arabia's own forces, and they are the ones retaking those areas," Asif told Geo News from Riyadh late Monday.

That places Pakistan in a defensive posture alongside a Saudi offensive campaign. Analysts say it raises a question Islamabad has not answered publicly: how long can Pakistan stay out of the actual fighting?

What is already in place

A Pakistani military presence in Saudi Arabia is nothing new. Pakistan has trained Saudi military personnel since 1967, with a 1982 agreement formalising the dispatch of soldiers to the kingdom. A declassified CIA assessment from June 1985 estimated that 13,000-14,000 Pakistanis were serving in the Saudi military, including an armoured brigade at Tabuk. During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Pakistan also sent a large force to the kingdom on defensive duties.

Pakistan also signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia in September 2025, under which aggression against one party is treated as aggression against both. In April, Riyadh confirmed that a Pakistani force, including fighter jets and support aircraft, had arrived at King Abdulaziz Air Base in Eastern Province.

Pakistan has never disclosed, however, how many troops it has deployed to Saudi Arabia. In September, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of the military's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told Saudi outlet Arab News that Pakistani forces had been deployed to protect the kingdom and the holy sites. "I want to emphasise the word 'physical' here. We will go to any limits," Chaudhry said. ISPR did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment on the deployment arrangement reached in Riyadh.

On Tuesday, Pakistan's Ministry of Information posted on X that its commitment to the security of the holy sites and the kingdom was non-negotiable. "The operational details of realising collective deterrence fall within the scope of operational security and cannot be subject to media speculation," the ministry said.

Turkey's footprint is less clear. Asif said Turkish forces were also present, but Ankara has not publicly confirmed any deployment. "There is no publicly acknowledged permanent Turkish deployment in Saudi Arabia," Gokhan Ereli, an international relations expert at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul, told Al Jazeera. Ereli noted that under Article 92 of Turkey's constitution, the authority to send troops abroad rests with parliament, which has not ratified the Mecca Pact.

What could deterrence look like?

Dania Thafer, executive director of the International Gulf Forum, said Riyadh wants the pact to carry "real weight." "Saudi Arabia is trying to turn the Mecca Pact from a political statement into a deterrence measure," she told Al Jazeera.

In the near term, according to Thafer, Riyadh mainly wants Pakistan and Turkey to help protect Saudi territory and strengthen air and missile defences, signalling that another attack is no longer a matter solely between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Houthi forces have struck numerous Saudi cities and facilities, including the East-West Pipeline that Riyadh is using to export oil as Iran restricts transit through the Strait of Hormuz amid the US-led war. Saudi authorities said two of the country's airports were attacked on Monday night, injuring at least three people.

Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman's account of the meeting went further, however, than what Thafer described. "The committee agreed to activate collective deterrence measures within the framework of the Alliance in response to the attacks and all those responsible for them," he wrote on X. Thafer argued the phrasing was deliberate. "'All those responsible' is intentionally vague. It tells the Houthis that Saudi Arabia may go beyond intercepting missiles and strike any entity or infrastructure that enables those attacks. At the same time, it warns external backers that Riyadh is tracking the entire support network," she said.

Pakistani officials have struck a more cautious tone. "The document itself says, first, that it is defensive. It has no offensive agenda," Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said at a news conference in Islamabad on October 2.

Tughral Yamin, a retired brigadier general and senior fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, said Pakistan's contribution was likely to be specialised rather than large-scale. "Pakistan will most likely reinforce its existing presence with air defence units, drones, battlefield communications systems and offensive cyber warfare specialists, engineering troops for laying and clearing mines, and some special operations personnel. I think no more than that," he told Al Jazeera.

Ereli predicted Turkey's role would be similarly limited. "The actual response will be calibrated and largely non-boots-on-the-ground. That means diplomatic coordination, intelligence sharing, emergency air defence supplies, drones and electronic warfare, and possibly naval or air defence assets," he said.

Could it expand into Yemen?

Thafer said there are currently two campaigns running in parallel. "There are really two concentric operations under way: one is the defence of Saudi Arabia; the second is changing the military balance inside Yemen so the Houthis can no longer attack Saudi territory from a position of growing strength," she said.

Pakistan has not publicly said where its role stops. Asked by reporters in Rome on September 30 whether Pakistani forces would take part in airstrikes in Yemen, Asif did not answer directly. "I won't go into details, but clearly when I say we are bound by this agreement to defend Saudi Arabia, that means any means we have will be available to Saudi Arabia," he said.

Pakistan has faced this question before. In April 2015, its parliament unanimously passed a resolution stating that "Pakistan should stay neutral in the Yemen conflict so that it can play an active diplomatic role to end the crisis." The resolution also committed Pakistan, however, to standing with Saudi Arabia if its territorial integrity were violated or the holy sites threatened.

Monday's joint statement justified the deployment in similar terms and condemned plots targeting Mecca and Medina.

Tehran is watching closely. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran hoped reports of Pakistan deploying troops for the war in Yemen were untrue. He warned that any new intervention would only complicate the situation further.

At the same news conference last week, Dar said he had raised the pact with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in New York in September, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. "I informed them that we are party to a defence pact, and as Muslims we must honour it, and God willing, we will," he said. He said Iranian leaders suggested approaching the Houthis politically rather than militarily. Monday's statement made no mention of a political process.

Javad Heiran-Nia, an analyst at the Persian Gulf Studies Group in Tehran, said Iran draws a clear distinction. "Overall, if Pakistan's deployment is purely defensive and limited to protecting Saudi facilities, Tehran can accept it. However, if Pakistan takes part in offensive operations targeting the Houthis, Iran sees that as a red line, because it regards the Houthis as part of its strategic depth on the Arabian Peninsula," he told Al Jazeera. "For now, Pakistan's mediator role has shifted from neutrality to managing conflicting interests, and its credibility is very fragile," he added.

Yamin also argued the responsibility lies with Islamabad. "Pakistan needs to carefully draw red lines to prevent its military from taking part in combat operations targeting the Houthis. So the question is not how they will take part but how they can avoid being dragged in," he said.

How long will it last?

Much depends on what Riyadh wants in Yemen. "Riyadh may want a short, high-intensity campaign to restore deterrence rather than an open-ended, expanded Yemen war," Thafer said. This week, however, Yemeni government forces said their ambitions were no longer limited to retaking territory lost to the Houthis in recent weeks, and were in effect aimed at recapturing the capital Sanaa, which the Iran-backed group has controlled since 2014.

"Military campaigns are defined by objectives: securing Saudi territory and Bab al-Mandab can be limited," Thafer said. "Trying to fundamentally defeat the Houthis or retake Sanaa would be a very different war and could last far longer."