Pakistan’s Yemen moment

AI Summary

Pakistan’s invocation of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement could lead to military deployments alongside Türkiye to protect Saudi Arabia. The commitment risks drawing Islamabad into Yemen-related regional conflicts while worsening tensions with Iran along Pakistan’s volatile western border.

ON Oct 5, in an emergency meeting, the member states of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement invoked the joint defence clause. Now, Islamabad and Ankara can actively move towards rapid force deployment to protect Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. The Middle East is one of the most complex and conflict-prone regions. The decision to operationalise the collective defence clause in less than two months of signing the MJDA suggests that Islamabad might remain embroiled in several layers of Middle Eastern conflicts in future under these security commitments. This is a classic Pakistan-Yemen moment, which the previous PML-N government avoided in 2015. Saudi Arabia officially asked Pakistan in 2015 to join its coalition against Yemen’s Houthis. However, Pakistan chose to remain neutral. More than a decade after Pakistan took one of its toughest foreign policy decisions, the Yemen moment has resurfaced. This time, however, Pakistan has made security commitments to Saudi Arabia under the MJDA in 2026 and the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed last year. Yemen is one of the most complex cases of civil unrest and conflict, illustrating how external actors can complicate regional and domestic conflict dynamics. Following a Saudi-led coalition’s seven-year intervention from 2015 to 2022, the UN brokered a truce. However, a final peace agreement remains pending. Consequently, until a formal Saudi-Houthi accord is finalised, Pakistan alongside Ankara may face prolonged military deployments lasting months or even years to bolster Saudi defence forces within their territory. Despite these operational challenges, Pakistan must fulfil its security commitments to Saudi Arabia. In the realm of global geopolitics, a nation’s security commitments are the bedrock of its external power projection and diplomatic leverage. Having formally elevated its bilateral arrangements into the binding, Nato-like collective security framework of the MJDA, Islamabad cannot afford to hesitate when the pact is invoked. Therefore, Pakistan must fulfil its security obligations wholeheartedly to safeguard its strategic credibility. Furthermore, the economic dimension of this relationship underpins Pakistan’s very survival. Saudi Arabia has historically stood as Islamabad’s premier economic anchor during its darkest balance-of-payments and liquidity crises. To survive a perilous geopolitical tightrope, Pakistan must immediately execute a sophisticated, active, and dual-front diplomatic strategy. While Islamabad must deliver on its collective defence commitment to Saudi Arabia, it cannot afford a catastrophic fallout with its western neighbour, Iran. Pakistan shares a volatile, 900-kilometre border with Iran, a frontier already plagued by cross-border militancy and fragile security dynamics. Direct military entanglement with the Iranian ‘Axis of Resistance’, or an operational misstep that Tehran perceives as hostile, would trigger an asymmetric blowback along the Balochistan border, destabilise Pakistan’s internal security, and ruin vital regional trade prospects. To survive this perilous geopolitical tightrope, Pakistan must immediately execute a sophisticated, active, and dual-front diplomatic strategy. The first pillar of this strategy requires active diplomatic engagement with Iran to negotiate a comprehensive, long-term peace treaty between Riyadh and Tehran. By signing or even negotiating a peace treaty between the two capitals, Islamabad will likely be able to reduce regional tensions and minimise concerns of direct military confrontation under the MJDA with Iran. Islamabad is uniquely positioned for this role. Recently, Islamabad garnered significant diplomatic goodwill by acting as a trusted backchannel and mediator between the US and Iran. Islamabad’s mediatory role brought the US and Iran directly to the negotiating table, which culminated in the Islamabad MoU. However, given the immense scale of the current regional mistrust, hostilities, and crisis, Pakistan cannot walk this path alone. To maximise the probability of success, Islamabad must integrate China into a co-mediatory process. This joint Beijing-Islamabad peace initiative can offer the perfect synergy of regional solutions for regional tensions. China has been viewed as a factor of stability in South Asia and the Middle East. While Pakistan possesses deep, institutionalised defence ties with Riyadh, and a shared diplomatic vocabulary with Tehran, China enjoys immense economic influence over both nations through its Belt and Road Initiative, and comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with Iran. Beijing has already demonstrated its diplomatic capability by successfully brokering the historic Saudi-Iran normalisation pact in 2023. By combining Islamabad’s strategic clout with China’s economic heft, this collaborative framework can offer Riyadh and Tehran structural security guarantees and economic incentives, respectively. These two elements ca