By Khawaja Hamza

Islamabad- Director General ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has described the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye as defensive, saying the pact has no “regional aspirations”.

“It is defensive, as the word also implies. There’s nothing aggressive. There are no regional aspirations. It is a collective deterrence,” said Lt Gen Chaudhry, Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), in an interview with Al-Arabiya English on Wednesday.

The Makkah trilateral agreement — signed between Islamabad, Riyadh and Ankara on August 7 — provides for collective security and defence cooperation among the three states.

The question about a response under the Makkah defence pact arose amid Yemen’s Houthis attacks on Saudi cities and energy ⁠infrastructure, becoming a second theatre of war in the Middle East.

Responding to a question, the ISPR chief called the joint security pact “complementary”, saying that member countries of the pact had independent relations with other alliances, countries and blocs.

“So this mutual defence agreement is complementary in nature. It is not competing with any other relationship of all these countries with each other,” he explained.

When asked how Pakistan would respond if any member of the pact came under attack, Lt Gen Chaudhry said operationalisation details of the defence agreement are classified, and they are never made public.

“You see, you have multiple other agreements which are defensive in nature and committal in nature. But if you see, no country comes out and starts sharing its operational details in any military, because what you’re asking is the ‘how part’ of how we are going to defend Pakistan against any aggression. I think that is always part of the operational classification and security.

“So no country does that. So even so, what you’re asking is how it will be done. It is for the three countries to decide, and it is for them to know and for them to actualise it.”

Speaking about the May 2025 conflict with India, Lt Gen Chaudhry said Islamabad taught New Delhi a lesson that a military conflict between two nuclear countries and “especially two neighbouring nuclear countries is out of the question.

“[…] what a strategic folly India made that was the lesson that we taught in each domain, whether it was in the air, ground, cyber, sea… whether it was in informational [or] it was in the diplomatic domain. So yes, a good lesson was taught to India.”

The ISPR DG, India has a problem of internalisation of external issues. “For example, Kashmir is an external problem, an established agenda on this in the United Nations Security Council, and they want to internalise it again through repression,” he added.

Lt Gen Chaudhry said the message that Pakistan kept on giving to Indians is: “Pakistan believes in peace on equal terms; Pakistan is a very rational and objective player, a very rational and objective actor who believes in regional peace.”

However, the chief military spokesperson warned India against any military aggression, saying that Pakistan will not hesitate to safeguard its security and integrity.

“We had very emphatically shown to Indians and the world at large during Marka-e-Haq that we have the capability, resolve and the will of the people to dominate to control the escalation…”.

He warned that the consequences will be catastrophic for India if it resorts to any “false flag operation, build up a narrative and try to force it”.

Responding to a question as to what mechanisms exist to prevent a Pakistan-India confrontation from becoming nuclear, the ISPR chief said capability and the resolve of Pakistan is the “biggest guarantee that if you [India] try to do it then you are yourself going into willingly going into mutually assured destruction”.

Moreover, Lt Gen Chaudhry said Pakistan’s political leadership acted rationally during the May conflict compared to Indians who “in their strategic folly and hubris decided to go in through the military path in this environment”.

“So what we did, we went to notch up plus responses everywhere, and then it was them who could not even sustain Pakistan’s conventional military response for a few hours.”

On May 6-7 last year, India launched an unprovoked attack on Pakistan on May 6, following an attack on tourists in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam town.

Pakistan, during the 87-hour conflict, downed eight Indian fighter jets, including French-made Rafale, and dozens of drones.

The war between the two nuclear-armed nations ended on May 10 with a ceasefire agreement brokered by the US.