New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) Pakistan, battling insurgencies at home and tensions along multiple borders, is too overstretched to offer meaningful military support to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca Pact, a report has highlighted.

According to The Cipher Brief, the deadly Houthi strikes on Riyadh’s international airport on October 10 and 11, which killed 12 people and injured around 300, came just days after Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan activated the pact on October 5, underlining that it had done little to deter the Houthis.

“The pact’s most acute capacity problem lies in Pakistan. Islamabad must contain the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baloch separatist violence while guarding a contested frontier with Afghanistan and maintaining forces opposite India,” the report stated as escalating Houthi attacks expose the limits of the new collective-defence arrangement.

It pointed to Pakistan’s airstrikes inside Afghanistan on October 1 amid recurring border clashes, and the imposition of emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on October 11, adding that the frontier with India remains a contingency Pakistani military planners cannot ignore.

“This threat landscape will create serious bandwidth issues for Pakistan’s military in the immediate to near term, further limiting Islamabad’s support for Riyadh,” the report said.

Though Islamabad has denied Western media reports that its troops are deployed in government-held areas of Yemen, the death of a Pakistani driver in a Houthi drone strike in Marib has raised questions over whether Islamabad has taken on a direct combat role alongside Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, it noted.

“Neither country should be dismissed as a partner, and neither should be treated as an unlimited strategic reserve for a war with no clear end date,” the report said, referring to Pakistan and Turkey.

Arguing that Ankara and Islamabad are unwilling and probably unable to hit Houthi infrastructure, the report urged Washington to step up military support to Riyadh and Yemen’s internationally recognised government through targeting support, aerial refuelling, air and missile defence and counter-drone capabilities, without plunging into an open-ended bombing campaign.

“The Mecca partners can share the burden, but they cannot yet carry it alone,” it stated.

--IANS

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