Publications
Pakistan’s Military Presence in the Gulf and the Meaning of the Makkah Agreement
Muhammad Waqas Haider
Analysis Series
Analysis/0063/August/2026/London-Dialogue. 09 August 2026
Author: Muhammad Waqas Haider
When Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August 2026, declaring that an armed attack on any one of the three would be treated as an attack on all, most commentary reached for the language of novelty. Yet for Pakistan the agreement is less a departure than a formalisation of something that has existed on the ground, in barracks, air bases and naval berths across the Gulf, for the better part of half a century. Pakistan is not a newcomer to Gulf security; it is arguably its oldest external contributor after the West. Understanding what the Makkah Agreement means therefore requires looking past the treaty text to the physical presence beneath it, service by service, and asking what that presence can and cannot deliver. This is an assessment of that reality, of the army, air force and navy that Pakistan already maintains across the region, and of how a paper commitment signed in the holy city intersects with the forces already deployed on the sand.
The scale of the historical footprint is easy to underestimate. At the height of the Cold War, Pakistan maintained military missions in more than twenty countries and, by some accounts, as many as forty to fifty thousand personnel serving abroad, with the largest concentration in Saudi Arabia. That presence has waxed and waned amid regional crises, but it never disappeared. The professional relationships it built, including Pakistani officers training, advising, and in some cases commanding Gulf formations, are the true foundation on which the Makkah Agreement now rests. A treaty can be signed in an afternoon. The trust that gives it meaning took fifty years.
The Army: The Enduring Backbone
The Pakistan Army is the oldest and largest component of this presence, and Saudi Arabia has always been its centre of gravity. Formal cooperation was codified in a 1982 protocol that allowed Pakistani troops to be stationed in the Kingdom for training, and under its terms a standing contingent has been present ever since. By 2018, that core stood at around sixteen hundred army personnel, reinforced that February by a further thousand on what Islamabad carefully described as a training and advice mission confined to Saudi territory. The caveat mattered, because Pakistan’s parliament had in 2015 unanimously refused to commit combat troops to the Saudi-led war in Yemen, a decision that still shapes the political limits of any deployment. The army’s Gulf role has thus been deliberately bounded: instruction, internal security assistance, joint exercises, and the quiet secondment of expertise, rather than expeditionary war.
That boundary was tested in 2026. Following Iranian and allied strikes on Saudi territory during the wider war, multiple international outlets reported a far larger Pakistani deployment. A Reuters investigation, carried by Bloomberg and Arab News, described some eight thousand troops, a squadron of about sixteen JF-17 fighters, drone units and a Chinese-supplied HQ-9 air defence system, operated by Pakistani personnel and financed by Riyadh. Other accounts put the ground figure higher, and the numbers should be treated with caution since neither government confirmed them and estimates ranged widely. What is not in dispute is the direction of change: a presence long defined as advisory acquired, at least reportedly, a combat-capable character during an active conflict. Even here the framing was careful, with sources stressing a primarily advisory and training purpose, but the distinction between advising and defending narrows quickly when the missiles are real.
The Air Force: The Sharpened Instrument
If the army is the backbone, the air force has become the instrument that gives the presence its contemporary edge. Pakistan Air Force officers have served in Gulf air arms in training and advisory roles for decades, but the 2026 crisis marked a visible step change. The PAF reportedly deployed fighters and support aircraft to King Abdulaziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the province most exposed to Iranian fire, and the reported inclusion of the jointly Sino-Pakistani JF-17 and the HQ-9 system carried a second implication noted by regional analysts: that Chinese-origin equipment was entering the Gulf’s defensive ecosystem through Pakistani hands. This is the dimension where Pakistan offers something the Gulf states cannot easily buy elsewhere: not merely airframes but trained crews, air defence expertise, and the integrated experience of an air force that fought a high-intensity engagement against a major adversary in May 2025. For a region newly anxious about missile and drone saturation, that is a specific and timely competence.
The air power relationship is not confined to Saudi Arabia. Pakistani air advisers and instructors have long histories with several Gulf air forces, and the appeal is consistent: a professional cadre that speaks the same platforms and doctrines as much of the developing world at a fraction of the political cost of a Western basing arrangement. The PAF’s Gulf footprint is smaller in numbers than the army’s, but in strategic weight per head, it may now be the more consequential of the two.
The Navy: The Quiet Enabler
The Pakistan Navy’s Gulf presence is the least visible and, in its own way, the most strategically located, given that Pakistan sits astride the sea lanes carrying Gulf energy eastward. Naval cooperation is long-standing, with the Pakistan Navy having trained the Royal Saudi Navy in its formative years and continuing to conduct regular joint exercises with the navies of the UAE, Oman and Qatar. Much of this maritime activity has taken place within the American-led Combined Maritime Forces, where Pakistani officers have periodically held command of multinational task forces, giving the navy credibility in Gulf waters disproportionate to its size. During the 2026 crisis, two officials indicated that the Saudi arrangement also envisaged the deployment of Pakistani warships, though independent confirmation that any had arrived was lacking, a reminder that the naval dimension remains the opaquest and the most contingent.
Beyond Saudi Arabia: the wider Gulf
Pakistan’s regional presence extends well past Riyadh. In Qatar, Pakistan maintains a standing contingent of several hundred troops and, during the 2022 World Cup, deployed forty-five hundred infantries to secure the tournament, the largest such contribution by any single state. In the United Arab Emirates, Pakistani personnel have served in training and advisory capacities for decades, and in Bahrain they have played a critical and continuing role in the national guard and police. Oman’s ties run back to Pakistani assistance during the Dhofar rebellion, and Kuwait hosted Pakistani advisers and, after 1990, demining teams. Analysts describe this as a deliberate model: an embedded, lower-visibility presence hosted within local facilities rather than in sovereign Pakistani bases, which gives host governments military utility without the politically sensitive optics of foreign basing rights. It is a posture built for deniability and flexibility, and it is precisely this dispersed, trusted network that the Makkah Agreement now gathers under a single political umbrella. The following table shows the number of personnel deployed
Service & Host State | Presence / Estimated Strength & Assets | Legal / Institutional Basis | Primary Purpose | Key Source |
PAKISTAN ARMY: The Enduring Backbone of The Gulf Presence | ||||
Saudi Arabia (standing contingent) | Core advisory force ~1,600 (2018), reinforced by ~1,000 in Feb 2018 (~2,600 total). Historic peaks of up to ~15,000 in the 1970s-80s, and ~13,000 troops plus ~6,000 advisers after 1991. | 1982 Organisation/Security Protocol; Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (Sept 2025). | Training, advising, internal-security assistance, joint exercises; a standing political tripwire. | |
Saudi Arabia (2026 surge) | Reported ~8,000 troops of a combat-capable character deployed from April 2026; figures unconfirmed by either government and disputed across outlets. Equipment financed by Riyadh. | Invoked under the 2025 SMDA amid the Iran war. | Reinforcement and deterrence of Iranian/Houthi strikes; advisory role shading into forward defence. | |
Qatar | Standing contingent of several hundred (~650); surged to 4,500 infantry for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the largest single-state security contribution to the tournament. | Bilateral defence cooperation; forces hosted within Qatari facilities (no sovereign Pakistani base). | Training, advisory support, and major-event and internal security. | |
United Arab Emirates | Longstanding training and advisory presence; standing numbers not publicly disclosed. | Bilateral defence cooperation. | Training, advisory support, capability development. | |
Bahrain | Continuing and significant role in the national guard and police; numbers not publicly disclosed but historically substantial. | Longstanding security-sector cooperation and recruitment. | Internal security, national guard and policing. | |
Oman | Combat assistance to Omani forces during the Dhofar rebellion (1960s-70s); ongoing advisory and exercise ties. | Longstanding bilateral defence relationship. | Historical counter-insurgency support; training and exercises. | |
Kuwait | Advisers since the late 1960s; up to ~700 personnel in 1990; UN mine-clearance teams after the 1991 Gulf War. | Bilateral cooperation; coalition participation (1991). | Training, technical advice, post-war demining. | |
PAKISTAN AIR FORCE: The Sharpened Instrument | ||||
Saudi Arabia (historic) | PAF officers have served in and instructed the Royal Saudi Air Force since the 1960s, when Gulf states routinely employed Pakistani aircrew and technicians. | Longstanding air-force cooperation and secondment. | Piloting, air-defence manning, technical instruction. | |
Saudi Arabia (2026) | Reported squadron of ~16 JF-17 fighters, ~2 drone squadrons and a Chinese-origin HQ-9 air-defence system at King Abdulaziz Air Base, Eastern Province; operated by PAF personnel and financed by Riyadh (reported, unconfirmed). | 2026 deployment under the SMDA framework. | Air defence and deterrence against missile and drone saturation; combat-capable reinforcement. | |
Wider Gulf (UAE, Oman, Qatar others) | PAF instructors and advisers embedded in several Gulf air arms in various capacities; numbers not publicly disclosed. | Bilateral training arrangements. | Pilot and technical training, air-defence advising. | |
PAKISTAN NAVY: the quiet enabler | ||||
Saudi Arabia | Trained the Royal Saudi Navy in its formative years; sustained maritime cooperation. In 2026 sources indicated warship deployment was envisaged, though arrival was not independently confirmed. | Longstanding naval cooperation; SMDA (2025). | Training, coastal and maritime security, deterrence at sea. | |
UAE, Oman, Qatar | Regular bilateral and multilateral naval exercises with Gulf navies. | Naval cooperation agreements. | Interoperability, maritime-security cooperation. | |
Bahrain / regional (Combined Maritime Forces) | Embedded in the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (HQ Bahrain); Pakistan Navy officers have repeatedly commanded multinational task forces such as CTF-150 and CTF-151. | CMF membership and rotational command. | Counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, maritime security, multinational command. | |
Note on figures. The 2026 deployment figures rest on international reporting, principally a Reuters investigation carried by Bloomberg, Arab News and others, and remain officially unconfirmed and disputed; estimates of ground strength ranged from roughly 2,600 to 13,000 across outlets. Several standing figures, notably for the UAE and Bahrain, are not publicly disclosed and are best-available estimates. Historical peaks fluctuated sharply with regional crises.
Assessment: What the Presence Can and Cannot Do
Set against this backdrop, the Makkah Agreement is better understood as the political capstone of an existing structure than as the creation of a new one. Its significance is real but bounded, and honesty requires stating both sides. On the one hand, Pakistan brings assets no other partner can match in combination: a large, combat-experienced army, an air force with recent high-intensity experience and access to Chinese systems, a navy embedded in Gulf maritime security, and the unique standing of the Muslim world’s only nuclear power. The physical presence turns the treaty’s collective-defence clause from rhetoric into something a potential aggressor must actually weigh, functioning, as one analysis put it, as a strategic tripwire rather than a mere advisory mission.
On the other hand, the constraints are equally concrete. Pakistan’s forces are heavily committed on two of their own frontiers, with India to the east and a deteriorating security situation with Afghanistan to the west, which limits how much can credibly be projected westward in a large-scale contingency. The 2015 parliamentary bar on combat participation abroad remains a domestic reality that no treaty automatically overrides, and the reported 2026 deployment showed how uncomfortably the mediator’s role sits alongside the partisan one, since Pakistan brokered a ceasefire in the very war in which it was simultaneously reinforcing one side. There is also the delicate task of not being drawn into intra-Gulf rivalries, given that Pakistani personnel serve states that do not always agree with one another. The presence is a genuine source of influence, but it is neither unlimited nor cost-free.
The deeper meaning of the Makkah Agreement, read through the forces already on the ground, is therefore one of consolidation and signalling rather than transformation. It codifies a role Pakistan has played for fifty years, raises its political visibility, and converts a web of bilateral understandings into a trilateral framework with Türkiye’s considerable weight added. For Islamabad, the prize is strategic relevance and the deepened partnership of two wealthy and capable states; the price is a commitment that must be defined narrowly and managed with discipline if it is not to exceed what Pakistan’s stretched forces can sustain. The boots, the wings and the hulls were already there. What Makkah has done is give them a name, a shared pledge, and a far brighter spotlight. Whether that spotlight illuminates a genuine alliance or merely a well-established arrangement in new dress is the question the coming years, and the next crisis, will answer.
Muhammad Waqas Haider
Related posts
The Maritime Blockade and the Strategic Calculus of the U.S., Iran, and Israel Toward a Renewed Armed Confrontation
Understanding Asim Munir’s Doctrine: Regime Security in Place of a National Goal
The Data Dilemma: Navigating the AI Systems Matrix
The Anatomy of a Shortfall: Europe’s Nine Capability Areas and the Lessons for Pakistan
From Quiet Diplomacy to Attempted Maritime Security Governance: Oman’s Role and Limits in the 2026 Strait of Hormuz Crisis
Anatomy of Asymmetry: How a Weaker State Converts Vulnerability into Leverage
Integration for Stability: The SDF’s Dissolution and Syria’s Security Order
The Western Flank Unravelled: Cross-Border Militancy, TTP Resurgence, and Afghan Taliban Governance
The Time of Guards Tank Divisions is Gone, or Maybe It is Not?
Re-pricing Israel’s Corridor: The Mecca Alliance and IMEC
The SCO at 25: From Regional Security Mechanism to Platform for a Multipolar Eurasia
Imran Khan: The Last Hope of a Nation
