Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara switch on the Mecca pact's deployment clause

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey agreed on Monday to send the military forces their Mecca pact already provides for, and to do it quickly. The Pakistani foreign ministry said the three had decided to provide the agreed forces and capabilities and to ensure their rapid deployment to the kingdom.

The decision came out of an emergency meeting in Riyadh of the Strategic Political and Defence Committee set up under the pact. Saudi defence minister Khalid bin Salman said the members had agreed to trigger the deployment in response to the attacks and to all those responsible for them. The alliance statement tied the move to what it called heinous attacks by Yemen's Houthi group against Saudi Arabia.

The pact was signed on 7 August. It says an attack on any one of the three will be treated as an attack on all, the formula NATO uses in Article 5. It was signed shortly before the Houthis opened an offensive in Yemen that included strikes on Saudi targets. Monday's meeting is the first time the three have said the deployment clause is switched on, rather than available.

The announcement landed on the same day Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces pushed along the Bab el-Mandeb coast, retook ground around Dhubab, and reached Mocha, according to military sources who spoke to Reuters. Riyadh said it had struck hundreds of targets to cover that advance. A deployment of Pakistani and Turkish forces into the kingdom is a different act from air strikes inside Yemen. It puts foreign troops on Saudi soil under a treaty clause, in answer to attacks on Saudi territory, while the Yemeni government's own units move on the strait.

Neither the Pakistani statement nor Khalid bin Salman's remark gave a number of troops, a service, a base, or a date of arrival. Rapid deployment can mean a headquarters team this week or a brigade next month. The text that is public commits the three to provide the forces the pact already named. It does not publish the annex that would say how many. Until that annex or a later briefing appears, the operational fact is the political one: the clause has been triggered.

The pact's short life is part of the weight. Signed on 7 August, activated for deployment on 5 October, it has gone from paper to a Riyadh committee decision in two months. Pakistan's foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, had said days earlier that Iran had suggested talking to the Houthis rather than fighting them, and that the idea was not a written offer. Monday's statement does not mention talks. It mentions forces. The emergency meeting chose the military sentence.

Houthi attacks on Saudi energy and airport targets are the stated cause. The Yemeni government offensive on the Red Sea coast is the parallel move. Turkey and Pakistan are not, on the public text, joining that offensive. They are reinforcing Saudi Arabia under a mutual-defence clause. The difference will hold only if the forces stay on the Saudi side of the border. The statements do not say they will cross it. They also do not say they will not.

The next public marker is a deployment that can be seen: a unit, a port, an airlift. Until then, Monday's decision is a treaty event. Three capitals have said the attack on one has been treated as an attack on all, and that the forces written into the August pact are to move.