Mecca is not the subject of Twitter diplomacy.
Shortly before 6:50 p.m. Tuesday, Saudi air defenses intercepted a drone south of Mecca and shot it down before it approached the restricted airspace surrounding Islam’s holiest city. The coalition fighting in Yemen blamed it on the Houthis. The Houthis have not blamed it on anyone, insisting that they did not target Mecca at all and dismissing the account as a lie. Within an hour, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation was calling it a violation of the sanctity of Islam’s holiest sites, and the coalition settled on a phrase that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon: Mecca’s security is a red line. No one needed an explanation. Every year, Pakistanis send millions of people to this city for Hajj and Umrah. This security briefing did not last long.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif left within a few hours after giving a statement. “Cowardly, despicable, an outrageous act that has left Pakistanis sad and disturbed,” he said, and he meant it. He praised the Saudi soldiers who stopped him. But buried beneath that strong language was a quieter, more important line: exercise as much restraint as possible, step back from the brink, let the conversation do what missiles and drones cannot. Until now, almost no one has read online.
Because the argument that actually caught fire was different. Pakistan has defense agreements with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Someone tried to target Mecca. So Pakistan should go after the Houthis now, today, not wait any longer. It’s not a crazy instinct, of course. Love for Mecca runs deep, and patience for action runs short on a timeline made for outrage. But it’s not like a single defense alliance on the ground has ever actually worked, and that’s not what Pakistan’s own military spokesman said when someone asked him that exact question, just hours before Twitter debuted.
DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry gave an interview earlier on Wednesday and called the Makkah Defense Alliance, the agreement Pakistan signed with Saudi Arabia and Turkey last month, “defensive and complementary, not a rival to any existing relationship”. He said that it is made for collective prevention. No territorial ambitions. No, in his own words, a club for Muslim countries only. And when asked what actually happens if a member is assaulted, he gave the only answer a serving officer can give on camera: It’s a rating. Not Dodge. Every real treaty keeps this part silent, because deterrence only works if no one, including the public, knows when and how the response will come.
This is where the online version of events falls apart. The people who actually wrote the treaty know what its classified motives say and what each option costs, diplomatically and militarily. A comment section does not. This is not an argument for sitting on our hands. This is an argument for placing responsibility where it belongs, with the government and the generals who signed the treaty, not with a public that has never been shown a single page of it.
For now, the prime minister and the country’s top military spokesman are on the same page: stand by Saudi Arabia, avoid escalation, choose to discuss the firing. It’s fair to ask whether this reticence comes across as reluctance toward an alliance partner who is already using red-line words, or whether too much silence around mutual defensive motivations quietly undermines the whole point of being united. These are real questions. They don’t decide who is online the most before the facts are settled.
DG ISPR says the Makkah Defense Treaty is defensive, not against other alliances.
The post Makkah is not the subject of Twitter diplomacy appeared first on Daily Pakistan Urdu News.
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