Makkah Alliance names Nauman Mahmood its first secretary-general for three years

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey on 5 October 2026 appointed retired Pakistani lieutenant general Nauman Mahmood as the first secretary-general of the Makkah Alliance for Defense, for a three-year term. The decision came at an emergency meeting of the alliance’s Strategic Political and Defense Committee in Riyadh.

A joint statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency and posted by the Government of Pakistan said the three states met to address security developments and threats facing the kingdom. The committee decided to take the measures needed to provide the agreed military forces and capabilities, and to ensure their rapid deployment in Saudi Arabia. It also condemned attempts to target Makkah and Madinah, and continuing attacks on cities and on civilian and economic sites in the kingdom.

Pakistan and Turkey commended the Saudi armed forces for countering those attacks. The statement said the committee reviewed earlier political and military consultations, approved the recommendations put to it, and described the alliance as a commitment to collective defence.

The job was reserved for Pakistan in August

The name is not a surprise inside the three capitals. At the inaugural meeting of the same committee in Istanbul on 31 August, the three agreed that Pakistan would provide the secretary-general for the first three-year term. Islamabad announced Mahmood for the post on 23 September. Dawn reported that the Foreign Office called him the first secretary-general under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, and said he would lead a general secretariat being set up in Riyadh.

Monday’s meeting is the formal appointment by the committee, not the first public mention. The gap between the September announcement and the October decision is the institutional step: a named officer, a fixed term, and a secretariat city.

Mahmood was born around 1969 in Rawalpindi. He was commissioned in 1987 into the Baloch Regiment and retired in 2023 as a lieutenant general, with the Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Military). He commanded an infantry division in North Waziristan, served in the analysis side of the Inter-Services Intelligence as a major general, and commanded XI Corps in Peshawar from December 2019 until November 2021, when Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed took that corps. He was then president of the National Defence University from 23 November 2021 to 24 April 2023.

What the secretariat is for

The alliance is a trilateral arrangement among Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey. The secretariat in Riyadh is meant to give the three a standing place to coordinate forces and political decisions, rather than a fresh communique after each strike. A secretary-general does not command Saudi, Pakistani or Turkish units. He runs the office that is supposed to turn committee decisions into deployment plans.

The force language in Monday’s statement is more concrete than a pledge of solidarity. The committee said it would provide the agreed forces and capabilities and make sure they can move quickly into the kingdom. It did not publish a troop number, a list of units, or a date. The operational content is the order to prepare deployment, not a count of soldiers already in Saudi barracks.

The timing sits next to the war around Yemen and the strikes the statement attributes to threats against Saudi cities and the two holy cities. Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council has opened an offensive against Houthi-held territory, and Saudi officers have said the kingdom will give operational support. The alliance meeting does not say the Makkah secretariat will run that campaign. It does say the three states treat attacks on Saudi territory as a collective problem, and that Pakistani and Turkish forces are part of the answer they are willing to station.

A retired corps commander, not a serving one

Mahmood is retired. That is a deliberate shape for the job. A serving Pakistani lieutenant general in Riyadh would be under the chief of army staff in Rawalpindi. A retired officer heading a trilateral secretariat answers, on paper, to the committee of the three governments. His last field command was XI Corps, the formation responsible for the Afghan frontier, and his staff time included ISI analysis. The committee is hiring a man who has run a corps and a defence university, not a diplomat on a first security posting.

The three-year term also sets a clock. Pakistan holds the first turn, by the Istanbul understanding. What Turkey or Saudi Arabia receives in the second term is not in Monday’s text. Nor is the budget of the secretariat, the size of its military staff, or whether deployed units fall under Saudi command or under a combined staff. Those are the decisions the new office is now supposed to produce.

For the moment the public record is narrower. On 5 October, in Riyadh, three states named Nauman Mahmood as secretary-general for three years, condemned attacks on the kingdom including attempted strikes on the holy cities, and ordered the rapid deployment of forces they say they have already agreed.