Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has condemned the attempted drone attack on Makkah (Express Tribune).
What he said
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the dastardly and heinous attempted drone attack against the Holy Site of Makkah Al-Mukarramah.”
“Pakistan stands unwaveringly, shoulder to shoulder with the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the defence of its sovereignty.”
“There can be no words strong enough to capture the depth of anguish and sorrow felt by us at this reprehensible and unforgivable act.”
He praised the Saudi response and added: “I once again call upon all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to step back from the brink of further escalation.”
The two halves of that statement
Read the last sentence against the first three.
“Shoulder to shoulder in the defence of its sovereignty” is the language of an ally with a treaty commitment. “All parties… exercise maximum restraint” is the language of a mediator addressing both sides.
Pakistan is trying to be both at once, and the drone over Makkah makes that harder rather than easier. A guarantor of Saudi security calling for restraint by “all parties” is asking the party it guarantees to show some too.
That is not incoherence. It is the position of a country that has a defence pact with Riyadh, a long border with Iran, and a prime minister due at the UN on 25 September to argue that the US-Iran confrontation should be settled by negotiation.
The pact
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye was signed on 7 August. It is described as a defensive framework for collective deterrence rather than an offensive bloc.
The Foreign Office said on 10 September that no military response was under discussion and called the question hypothetical. It is less hypothetical today.
What is not established
The statement does not refer to the pact or to any Pakistani obligation arising from the attack. No Pakistani military measure has been announced, and the government has not said whether the agreement’s mechanisms have been invoked or discussed.
[Image: File photo via The Express Tribune]
