Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are reportedly set to hold an urgent high-level meeting under a joint defence pact to discuss ways to support Saudi Arabia amid attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, while Saudi Arabia’s top authorities have told troops to be ready to lay down their lives to fight their enemy.
It was signed to strengthen collective deterrence and expand defensive cooperation. Similar to NATO’s collective-defence principle, the pact entails that an attack on one of the three countries is considered an attack on all of them. It is set to harness each country’s greatest strengths — Turkey’s large military, the second-largest in NATO; Saudi Arabia’s position as the world’s top oil exporter; and Pakistan’s military capabilities, including its status as the only Muslim-majority country known to possess nuclear weapons. The report did not state when the meeting would take place. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have begun establishing mechanisms under the pact. The meeting concluded with an agreement to establish a secretariat in Saudi Arabia and strengthen military cooperation among the three nations. The three countries are set to meet to discuss how to support Saudi Arabia in countering Yemen’s Houthis, who have resumed major attacks on the country. The Houthis have also targeted Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, with a ballistic missile, which was intercepted.
The joint defence pact, signed by the three countries on August 7, is called the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. Their foreign and defence ministers, along with military chiefs, met in Istanbul on August 31 for the first meeting of the Strategic Political and Defence Committee. Because of the three countries’ overlapping concerns about regional wars spreading across borders, Iran’s increasing regional influence, tensions involving Israel, and threats to Saudi Arabia’s territories and borders, the pact was created.
Turkey’s Chief of General Staff General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet his Saudi and Pakistani counterparts as part of the pact, the defence ministry said on Friday. The urgent assembly announcement followed a meeting on Thursday in New York between Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ishaq Dar, and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan, according to Al Jazeera. Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles on Thursday that were aimed at Taif in western Saudi Arabia and the Yanbu area on the Red Sea.
It is important to note that the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement was not signed specifically to counter the Houthis. However, the Houthis denied targeting the city or any holy sites. There is no confirmation whether either country will join Saudi’s combat forces to tackle the Houthis. Its reasons are much broader, and the Houthi attacks are putting the new Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey pact to its first major test. ( With inputs from AP and Reuters)
The Houthis, at war with a Saudi-led coalition that has propped up the internationally-recognised Yemeni government since 2015, has upped its attacks against the kingdom, placing Yemen in the Middle East war. Saudi Arabia has also accused the Houthis of targeting Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, on September 15, claiming that it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi-launched drone.
