The Morning After the Revolution

By Saman Aftab The Ebola outbreak in DRC is not getting the required traction from the world despite being categorized as the fastest growing infection so far recorded by the World Health Organization (WHO). Before diving deep into the threats posed by this disease, it is imperative to provide the readers with an overview of this viral infection. An Overview of Ebola Outbreak The Bundibugyo virus, one of the Orthoebolavirus species is responsible for causing severe Ebola disease known as Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD). It is a zoonotic disease, with fruit bats suspected to be the natural reservoir.  With the close contact of a human to the blood or secretions of infected wildlife (including bats or non-human primates), the human gets the infection. Consequently, the infection spreads from one human to other through direct contact with the blood, bodily secretions, and organs of the infected ones. The viral infection can also spread through close contact with the surfaces and materials contaminated with the bodily secretions of the infected individuals. Very similar to the Corona virus, the spread of this infection is particularly high in health-care settings having inadequate sterilization measures in place. Moreover, a direct contact with the infected deceased individuals during their burial can contribute to its spread as well. Incubation period and Clinical symptoms The incubation period for BVD ranges from 2 to 21 days, and infected individuals are not infectious until symptom onset. Fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat may represent as the early symptoms of this disease. But the non-specific nature of these symptoms often makes the diagnosis difficult resulting in delayed detection. Without early detection, the symptoms of this disease aggravate leading to gastrointestinal symptoms and organ dysfunction. In some cases, haemorrhagic manifestations may also occur in the infected individuals. Diagnosis and Treatment In the absence of confirmatory tests such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) or antigen- or antibody-based assays in the laboratory, it becomes a challenge for the health care professionals to differentiate BVD from other endemic febrile illnesses such as malaria. Outbreak control depends on early detection, isolation and care, contact tracing, safe burials and strong community engagement. Since there are no approved vaccines or specific treatments available for BVD, the current mortality rate of 44% to 46% for this disease poses a great threat to the affected communities. Current situation of Ebola outbreak Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids and causes a hemorrhagic fever, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years. As per the reports of international media outlets, the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has spread to sixth province as death toll passes 2,100 with 4665 confirmed Ebola cases. The World Health Organization has already warned about its pace- the Ebola epidemic, already the deadliest in the country’s history, is spreading faster than any previous Ebola outbreak. Until now, five Congolese provinces had recorded cases: Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, North Kivu and South Kivu, Haut-Uélé and Tshopo. The risk of cross-border spread of this infection primarily to Uganda and South Sudan is very high. To make things worse, the response to contain this virus in the DRC is hampered by stretched health services, insufficient clean water and safe toilets. Some of the provinces where Ebola is present are densely populated and have only a weak government presence and largely lacking health infrastructure. North Kivu and South Kivu are also split by the front lines between the Congolese army and the anti-government armed group M23, backed by Rwanda, which has seized vast swathes of territory. This makes the conflict-ridden territory extremely prone to viral spread. Should we be worried? According to WHO official statement, the organization hopes to reverse the spread of this deadly virus in DRC within a span of three months with proper medical intervention. However, the pace with which it is spreading within DRC and bordering areas, it is quintessential to take some preventive measures. Since the globalization of the world was primarily responsible for Covid-19 pandemic, it is essential to have preparedness in advance. The healthcare authorities should establish proper communication channel with their counterparts in DRC to have real time data in hand. Similarly, a stock of screening kits should be maintained in the repository. In our airports and seaports, no preventive measures are in place for the screening of any such disease. To put things into perspective, our agencies working in the airports handle body search of persons and their belongings with no protective gears. They do not even wear any mask while dealing with international flights. Most of the time, those passengers who present with clinical symptoms of disease like coughing, flu or fever tend to wear no mask. This puts the fellow passengers and the airport authorities at risk of many diseases. Therefore, the government should take proper measures in this regard. The seaport and airport personnel should be trained to wear masks and protective gear while handling the flights coming from DRC directly or indirectly. Proper screening booths should be installed having health care professionals equipped with medical kits and personal protective gear. There should be proper sanitization within the airports and seaports vicinities. All these measures will put us in a better position to prevent many contagious diseases beforehand. Prevention should be the top most priority of our health care system only then we can envisage a healthy future. In the end, let us hope the viral infection in DRC subsides before getting out of control.                  

  In an international system undergoing rapid transformation, the emergence of a trilateral defense cooperation framework among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia signals a notable shift in how middle powers are approaching security and strategic autonomy.Three states, each central to its respective region, are seeking to institutionalize collaboration in defense, industry, and crisis management. The significance of this alignment extends beyond bilateral ties and touches upon regional stability, defense industrialization, and the evolving balance of power in Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. The rationale for this cooperation lies in the complementary strengths that each country brings. Pakistan contributes a large, professionally trained military with extensive experience in counterterrorism, peacekeeping, and mountainous warfare. It also maintains a credible nuclear deterrent and has developed a domestic defense industry in areas such as aerospace, missiles, and armored vehicles. Its location provides access to the Arabian Sea and proximity to key trade and energy routes linking South Asia, Central Asia, and the Gulf. Türkiye offers a military with NATO operational experience, combined with one of the fastest-growing defense industrial bases outside the traditional Western suppliers. Over the last decade, Ankara has demonstrated capacity in unmanned aerial systems, naval platforms, electronics, and aerospace subsystems. Its geographic position, connecting Europe, the Mediterranean, and West Asia, makes it a natural bridge between different security theaters. Saudi Arabia adds financial depth, energy influence, and a central role in Gulf security. Under Vision 2030, Riyadh has prioritized localization of defense manufacturing and diversification of partnerships. The Kingdom also carries substantial weight in the Arab and Islamic world, giving any trilateral initiative immediate political resonance across a wide geography. When viewed together, these capabilities form the basis for a partnership that is both symbolic and practical. Symbolically, it represents a commitment by three major Muslim-majority states to take greater responsibility for regional security. Practically, it creates opportunities for joint development, procurement, training, and operational coordination that can reduce duplication and increase efficiency. The regional importance of this alignment can be understood in several contexts. The Middle East and South Asia continue to face a complex mix of traditional and non-traditional security challenges. These include maritime threats in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, the proliferation of unmanned systems, cyber intrusions, and the persistent risk of transnational militancy. A structured mechanism for consultation among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia provides an additional channel for de-escalation and coordinated response. In maritime terms alone, the cooperation could contribute to the security of sea lanes that carry a significant portion of global energy and trade. Equally important is the dimension of defense industry collaboration. All three states have expressed a desire to move away from over-reliance on external suppliers and to build indigenous capacity. A trilateral format allows for economies of scale in research and development, co-production, and technology transfer. Areas of immediate potential include air defense systems, drones and counter-drone technology, armored vehicles, naval ships, and cybersecurity infrastructure. Beyond the military domain, such industrial cooperation often generates spillovers into civilian sectors such as aviation, shipbuilding, and advanced manufacturing, thereby supporting broader economic diversification goals. There is also a clear utility in the area of human security. The armed forces of Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia have all been involved in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, both domestically and abroad. Institutionalizing cooperation in logistics, medical support, and rapid deployment can enhance the region’s ability to respond to natural disasters, which have become more frequent and severe due to climate change. At the global level, the impact of this pact should be assessed within the framework of a multipolar world. The era of reliance on a single security provider is receding. States are increasingly building flexible, interest-based coalitions. The Pakistan-Türkiye-Saudi Arabia arrangement fits this pattern. It is not designed to replace existing alliances, but to complement them. All three countries maintain important relationships with the United States, China, the European Union, and Russia. The trilateral framework offers them greater flexibility and reduces exposure to disruptions in supply chains or shifts in political conditionality. For the wider Muslim world, this initiative presents a model of cooperation based on functional objectives rather than ideological or sectarian lines. It demonstrates that collective action is possible on issues of security, technology, and economic resilience. If successful, it could encourage similar arrangements in Africa and Southeast Asia, contributing to a more decentralized and networked global security architecture. From an economic perspective, defense cooperation often acts as a catalyst for deeper trade and investment. Joint ventures in defense production can lead to partnerships in technology, education, and infrastructure. Secure and stable regions are also essential for the trade corridors that all three states are seeking to develop, whether linking the Gulf to South Asia or connecting Anatolia to Central Asia. The long-term effectiveness of this pact will depend on how it is institutionalized. Three considerations will be decisive. First, the framework must remain open and consultative, so that it is not perceived as an exclusive bloc. Second, communication must be clear that the purpose is defensive and stabilizing, to avoid unnecessary misperceptions. Third, the cooperation must be rooted in sustainable industrial planning and regular exercises, rather than remaining at the level of declarations. The timing of this alignment is significant. The world in 2026 is marked by geopolitical competition, technological disruption, and climate-related stresses. In such an environment, states that can pool resources and coordinate policy are better positioned to protect their interests and contribute to regional stability. In essence, the trilateral defense cooperation among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia reflects a pragmatic recognition that security in the 21st century is interconnected. No single state can address maritime security, technological change, or humanitarian crises alone. By aligning their capabilities, these three countries are creating a platform that can deliver tangible benefits in deterrence, industrial development, and crisis response. This is not merely a defense agreement. It is an expression of strategic convergence among states that share geography, history, and a stake in a stable international order. If implemented with consistency

Every few months, someone declares that people no longer need literature. The argument usually sounds convincing enough. We live in a world of instant news, endless social media, podcasts, and artificial intelligence. Information arrives faster than ever before. Why spend days with a novel when an opinion can be delivered in mere seconds? Yet the strange thing is that the more information we have, the more relevant literature seems to become. Hand someone a novel written a century ago, and they might discover their own world reflected in its pages, including many of the same fears and uncertainties they face today. That is more than a coincidence. It is literature doing exactly what it has always done, peering beyond the moment in which it was written. Literature offers more than a compelling story and reminds us why it continues to resonate till date. Many admire literature for its alluring language and craft. Others value it for the evolutionary nature and futuristic tendencies. That’s the side this leans toward. Literature stays with us because it explains the world we’re still trying to make sense of. Every generation believes its experiences are unique. Pandemics feel unprecedented, propaganda seems like a modern invention and the world today evolves at a pace that feels unlike anything before it. Yet long before any of this dominated the headlines, writers had already imagined it, warned about it, or lived through versions of it themselves. Literature does not simply reflect its own era. It reaches far beyond it, exploring aspects of human nature that continue to surface despite changing circumstances. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, thousands of readers picked up a novel from 1947 and discovered echoes of the present. Albert Camus’s The Plague, set in the Algerian city of Oran, seemed to describe their own lives with strange precision; the empty streets, the panic-buying, the denial before the lockdowns, and that eerie numbness that emerged as the crisis dragged on. Camus never saw a pandemic like this coming. What he understood, decades before any of us lived through one, was how people respond when disruption takes hold. George Orwell did something similar, except his warning arrived even earlier. Nineteen Eighty-Four gave us words we now use so casually and forget they came from fiction: surveillance, doublethink, thoughtcrime. Orwell imagined a state where truth could be manipulated and every move was watched. Decades later, in a world run by data and constant tracking, his descriptions still feel eerily familiar. Pakistani writers were making this same point long before it became the world’s concern. Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh imagined a man stranded between two countries decades before the world started talking about refugees and border crises. Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag Ka Darya traced the same cycle of displacement and rebuilding that we’re still watching today, whether in Gaza, Ukraine, or Afghanistan, revealing how human beings survive conflict no matter which war or which century it happens to be. What makes literature so accurate over time is not mysticism. Writers were not fortune-tellers. They were keen observers of human nature. They sensed that while the world keeps reinventing itself, people rarely do. A writer who understands these instincts deeply enough, produces literature that seems to anticipate futures it was never meant to witness. That same power demands caution. Literature can expose hidden truths just as easily as it can be used as a tool of persuasion. Throughout history, poems, novels, and stories have been used to shape how people think, feel, and behave. Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden is a reminder of how easily powerful narratives can turn domination into duty. It shows how persuasive language can make unequal power structures appear virtuous and troubling ideas sound noble. The same dynamic persists today, whenever power seeks a more palatable language to conceal itself. The Soviet Union promoted an entire genre known as socialist realism, where literature was not expected to explore human complexity but to glorify the state and inspire loyalty. Even something as ordinary as a school curriculum works the same way. The books chosen for students are never just neutral stories. They are early lessons that shape young minds, teaching them which histories to trust and which values to hold onto. This is the quiet, manipulative side of literature that doesn’t need to announce itself, yet still decides how an entire generation views the world. Literature deserves more than passive consumption. The same stories that broaden our understanding can also be used to influence and persuade. That makes reading critically, asking who wrote something and why, not just an academic skill, but a way of navigating a world built on narratives. What keeps literature alive is not tradition, nostalgia, or academic praise. It is the moment of recognition it still delivers. When a writer long gone can describe anxieties, conflicts, and dilemmas that feel unmistakably current, how many of our modern concerns are merely old questions in new disguises?

We Were Forewarned, Then Why Are We Drowning, and What Lies Ahead In March, when the glaciers were shedding their winter whites too early and the northern valleys stood bare against a sky that should have held snow, I wrote that the coming monsoon would test us. The National Disaster Management Authority had foreseen rains twenty-two to twenty-six percent heavier than the floods that killed more than a thousand souls the year before. Our embankments were still broken. Our protocols were still asleep. It is late July now. The test has begun. Riverine area dwellers stand at the edge of swollen rivers, watching the water turn from brown to something near black, carrying the upstream soil. There is that familiar murmur of disbelief from government corridors—the same soft gasp that follows every flood, as if the water had not been whispering its arrival for months. But the water does not whisper to those who will not bend their ear. It speaks in the language of saturated earth, and we have heard it before. We have simply chosen, again and again, not to listen. We were forewarned by the agencies. We were forewarned by the science. And we were forewarned by the very land beneath our feet—the old, patient land that absorbed until it could absorb no more, and is now quietly drowning. Yet when the skies opened, we were caught unprepared. And the heavy heart of Bhadoon is still to come. What the Old Farmers Knew For generations, the farmers of the Indus Basin have spoken of Sawan and Bhadoon not as months, but as temperaments. Sawan, the early monsoon of July and mid-August, is the gentle guest who fills the earthen pot. Bhadoon, the late monsoon of August and September, is the guest who arrives heavy with sorrow, and finds the door already swollen shut. There is an old understanding in the villages of Punjab and Sindh: if Sawan has been generous—if the rains have fallen day after day without rest—then Bhadoon must be received with care. Not because Bhadoon brings more rain, but because the earth, by the time Bhadoon arrives, has already absorbed all it can hold. The soil is no longer soil. It is a clay pot filled to the lip, trembling at the brim. The next drop does not nourish. It overflows. Modern science calls this Antecedent Moisture Condition. During a gentle Sawan, the land breathes; the rivers rise slowly, politely. But when the early rains come without pause, the land stops breathing. Its lungs fill with water. What was once a sponge becomes something heavy, something waiting. In dry years, only a fraction of rainfall becomes dangerous runoff. But once the soil is saturated, eighty to ninety-five percent of every new drop becomes immediate floodwater. The sponge has no choice. It must release what it cannot hold. It weeps. Nature does not betray us. It simply does what it has always done. It is we who forget the earth, who build our homes upon its floodplains and then feign surprise when the water remembers its ancient path home. The Water Remembers This is not a new story. The water has told it before, and it has told it gently, and we have not listened. In 1955, the Ravi rose with a roar that split the embankments of Lahore’s periphery. The river had been primed for weeks—day after day of July and August rain had filled the soil until the ground could no longer hold the September deluge. The peak at Madhopur was the highest ever recorded. The city woke to find its edges softened, dissolved, gone. In 1992, the same priming filled Mangla and Tarbela to their brims by mid-August. When the early September rains came, Tarbela’s flood-peak reduction capacity collapsed from thirty percent to two percent. The rest surged into the lower plains, uninvited and sorrowful. The engineers knew what was coming. The farmers had only the sound of the river changing pitch—a sound every old farmer knows, a sound that means it is time to gather the children and climb. In 2022, Sindh became an inland sea. Nearly a meter of rain fell on ground that was already thirty percent wetter than it should have been. The water had nowhere to go but into homes, into fields, into the places where people had built their lives on the quiet assumption that the land would always absorb their troubles. The years that followed did not forgive us. In 2023, the Chenab and Jhelum catchments drank until they were full, and when Bhadoon came heavy in September, communities that had barely recovered from 2022 found themselves underwater again. In 2024, the same quiet sorrow played across Sindh and Balochistan—early rains primed the soil, late rains broke the banks, and the katcha communities woke to find their world softened and dissolved. These were not catastrophes on the scale of 2022, but gentle, persistent reminders that the mechanism does not rest, and that a loaded sponge does not care whether the year is famous or forgotten. Then came 2025. The NDMA’s own reports confirmed what the old farmers could have recited without a single instrument: the rain fell on ground that was already wet. The system had no buffer, no forgiveness, no room for error. One thousand and thirty-seven people died. More than two hundred and seventy-five of them were children. Nearly seven million were affected. Three million displaced. Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three homes damaged or destroyed. These are not estimates. These are the quiet names and numbers of a nation that has grown accustomed to forgetting. Now, in 2026, the NDMA warns of an even more intense monsoon. The early snowmelt has already fed the rivers before the clouds even gathered. The reservoirs are high. The soil is full. The sponge is loaded. And Bhadoon has not yet arrived. The Quiet After the Warning The tragedy of this year is not that we did not know. It is that

Our discussion of Bulleh Shah in Part IV concluded with a question: Who are we when power can no longer name us? Bulleh Shah dismantled the identities imposed upon the human person by lineage, orthodoxy and social hierarchy. Waris Shah takes the inquiry into the institutions governing everyday life. He shows what happens when two human beings attempt to live according to the freedom Bulleh imagined. Heer is celebrated as Punjab’s greatest love story. To describe it merely as a romance, however, is to conceal its intellectual achievement. Earlier poets narrated the sufferings of Heer and Ranjha; Waris Shah’s classic poetic work Heeer (1766) placed an entire social order on trial. Shafqat Tanvir Mirza rightly observed that Waris treated the story through the “politics, economy and cultural values” lived by the people of his period. His poem contains a devastating criticism of poor governance, institutional corruption, religious exploitation, arrogance of the wealthy and misery of those without power. Love provides the narrative, but power determines its outcome. Waris Shah wrote against the background of eighteenth-century political disintegration. Invasions, weakening imperial authority, struggles among local forces and economic insecurity had destabilised Punjab. Waris Shah was not attached to a royal court capable of insulating him from ordinary suffering. His Heer therefore became more than a reconstruction of an old legend. It preserved Punjab’s speech, customs and collective memory while exposing the institutions through which privilege protected itself. Heer is central to this achievement because she is not a passive beloved. She recognises Ranjha, brings him into her father’s household as a herdsman, arranges opportunities to meet him and openly asserts her choice when the relationship is discovered. She possesses intelligence, desire and moral agency. Her freedom is tolerated only while it remains invisible and does not threaten the authority of the family. The moment Heer chooses her own future, affection turns into surveillance. Her body becomes the bearer of family honour, and marriage becomes the means through which that honour is restored. Heer does not ask permission to feel. She declares a commitment already formed through conscience and love. Her language is especially significant. She does not present Ranjha as an object she wishes to acquire. She has offered her own life and accepted responsibility for that choice. In a society where marriage joins families, properties and status groups, such self-determination is revolutionary. The dispute is not simply between one prospective husband and another. Ranjha represents Heer’s autonomous choice; the Kheras represent the settlement arranged for her by others. Her family treats marriage as a transaction carrying consequences for lineage, reputation and power. Heer insists upon treating it as a union requiring the will of the persons whose lives it determines. میں تاں منگ رنجھیٹے دی ہو چکی اساں منگ درگاہ تھیں لیا رانجھا Main tāṅ mang Ranjheṭe dī ho chukkī Asāṅ mang dargāh thīṅ liyā Rānjhā I have already been pledged to Ranjha; from the divine court itself I received him. اساں جان رانجھیٹے دے پیش کیتی لکھ کھیڑیاں نوں چا گھولدی ہے Asāṅ jān Ranjheṭe de pesh kītī Lakkh Kheṛiāṅ nūṅ chā gholdī hai I have laid my life before Ranjha; I would sacrifice a hundred thousand Kheras for him. This is the political economy hidden within the romance. Property is not limited to land, cattle and wealth. Patriarchal authority extends the idea of ownership to women. A daughter may be cherished as long as she accepts the future selected for her. Once she claims ownership of her own will, love within the family becomes conditional. Research on Heer similarly identifies the family, property, mosque, qazi, feudal hierarchy and ruling elite as interconnected institutions shaped by economic interest. Kaido is the most visible agent of this system, though he should not be dismissed as a solitary villain. He represents social surveillance: the resentful custodian of conformity who observes, reports and converts private happiness into public scandal. Power does not survive through rulers alone. It recruits relatives, neighbours and self-appointed guardians of morality who internalise its prohibitions and enforce them upon others. Kaido’s triumph begins when Heer and Ranjha’s love is no longer treated as a human relationship but as an offence against collective honour. The family then requires an institution capable of turning its demand into a lawful and religious command. The qazi enters at precisely this point. Waris Shah does not attack faith. He exposes the appropriation of faith by those serving property and patriarchy. The qazi is called because parental pressure has failed to secure Heer’s consent. Religious vocabulary is employed to present submission as virtue and resistance as sin. Heer answers him from within the moral tradition he claims to represent. She insists that genuine faith cannot be separated from truth, and that her union with Ranjha possesses a reality no ceremonial decree can erase. The surviving text presents an extended confrontation in which the qazi invokes authority while Heer asserts conscience and consent. Unable to persuade her, institutional power reveals its coercive core. The qazi threatens punishment and demands that she accept the Khera marriage. قاضی بنھ نکاح تے گھت ڈولی نال کھیڑیاں دے دِتی تور میاں Qāzī bannh nikāh te ghat ḍolī Nāl Kheṛiāṅ de dittī tor miyāṅ The qazi bound the marriage and placed her in the palanquin; she was sent away with the Kheras. ہیر کھیڑیاں نال نہ تُرے مولے پیا پِنڈ دے وچ ہے شور میاں Hīr Kheṛiāṅ nāl na ture, maulā piyā Piṇḍ de vich hai shor miyāṅ Heer would not willingly go with the Kheras; an uproar filled the village. کھیڑے گھن کے ہیر نوں رواں ہوئے جویں مال نوں لے وَگے چور میاں Kheṛe ghin ke Hīr nūṅ ravāṅ hoe Jiveṅ māl nūṅ lai vagge chor miyāṅ The Kheras took Heer and moved away, like thieves driving stolen cattle. The comparison is Waris Shah’s own and is among the most revealing images in the poem. The final line strips the ceremony of its respectable appearance. There has been a qazi, a marriage procession, jewellery, property and public

The signing of the Pakistan–Saudi Arabia–Türkiye defence agreement in Makkah on August 7 marks a significant moment in the changing security architecture of the Middle East and South Asia. Its declaration that an armed attack against one member would be treated as an attack against all three has immediately raised questions about the future balance of power. Is the region moving towards two competing strategic formations — an emerging India-Iran axis on one side and the Pakistan-Saudi-Türkiye triangle on the other? The answer is not yet definitive, but the direction of regional politics is becoming increasingly visible. The most surprising element of this equation is Saudi Arabia and Türkiye. Relations between Riyadh and Ankara have not always been comfortable. The rivalry and mistrust of the past, particularly during the period when Saudi and Turkish regional interests sharply diverged, made the two capitals appear more like competitors than strategic partners. Yet geopolitics has a way of bringing former rivals together when their security calculations begin to converge. For Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, security has become inseparable from economic transformation. Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 projects require uninterrupted energy exports, stable maritime routes and a predictable regional environment. The continuing threat to Red Sea shipping and the vulnerability of energy infrastructure have demonstrated that geographical distance is no longer sufficient protection. Türkiye offers Riyadh a valuable strategic instrument. Ankara possesses NATO experience, an expanding defence industry and significant diplomatic access across the region. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can communicate with actors that may remain difficult for Riyadh or Washington to approach directly. Türkiye can therefore serve not merely as a military partner but potentially as a diplomatic bridge. This is where the role of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan becomes particularly important. His experience in intelligence and diplomacy could provide Ankara with the capacity to pursue difficult negotiations involving regional conflicts, including the unresolved Saudi-Houthi security dilemma. For Riyadh, reducing the threat to the Red Sea and ensuring uninterrupted oil and trade routes is not simply a military objective; it is an economic necessity. Türkiye, meanwhile, also has its own economic calculations. Ankara needs investment, economic stability and stronger international partnerships. A closer relationship with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States and Western financial institutions could provide economic and strategic dividends. Thus, the partnership is not based on sentiment but on converging interests. Pakistan’s position is even more complicated. Islamabad has historically enjoyed close defence and political relations with Saudi Arabia while maintaining strong ties with Türkiye. Its military credibility and longstanding relationship with Riyadh make it a natural participant in such an arrangement. Pakistan can potentially emerge as the facilitator connecting the Gulf with South Asian security calculations. But there is a price. Pakistan’s traditional diplomatic strength has partly rested on its ability to maintain communication with opposing camps. Formal participation in a collective-defence arrangement may make Islamabad appear less like a neutral mediator and more like a contestant in an emerging regional confrontation. The question therefore arises: can Pakistan protect its strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye without damaging its relations with Iran? The Iranian response will be crucial. Tehran is unlikely to accept a new security architecture surrounding it without attempting to construct diplomatic counterweights. Here, India could become an important part of the equation. Iran and India possess longstanding economic and strategic interests, particularly around connectivity, energy and the Chabahar corridor. Their cooperation does not automatically constitute a military alliance, but strategic circumstances could push their interests closer. Iran also possesses diplomatic instruments of its own. Oman and Qatar remain particularly important because of their ability to communicate with multiple competing powers. Rather than immediately creating a formal counter-alliance, Tehran could seek to use diplomacy, maritime negotiations and regional mediation to prevent isolation. This is why the emerging equation should not be reduced to a simple military confrontation. It is a contest of diplomacy, technology, economics, energy security and strategic geography. The United States also remains an unavoidable factor. Washington’s relationships with Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan and India mean that any emerging regional architecture will inevitably intersect with American interests. Yet it would be premature to describe the Makkah agreement as an anti-American bloc. Saudi Arabia remains deeply connected to the United States, Türkiye remains a NATO member, and Pakistan continues to maintain important relations with Washington. The real transformation may therefore be something more subtle: regional powers are increasingly seeking strategic autonomy instead of relying exclusively on one external guarantor. For Pakistan, this is a moment of both opportunity and danger. Islamabad can gain diplomatic weight from its position within the Pakistan-Saudi-Türkiye triangle, but it must avoid becoming trapped in a zero-sum regional rivalry. Its relationship with Iran cannot simply be sacrificed, nor can its longstanding partnership with Saudi Arabia be ignored. The emerging India-Iran axis and Pakistan-Saudi-Türkiye triangle may never become formal opposing blocs. But if regional tensions continue to deepen, the strategic calculations of these countries could increasingly move in opposite directions. The region is entering a new chess game — one in which missiles and drones matter, but diplomacy, energy routes, economic leverage and political alliances may matter even more. The challenge for Pakistan is therefore not merely to choose a side. It is to ensure that, while standing with its strategic partners, it retains enough diplomatic space to speak to everyone. Because in the new regional order, the strongest player may not be the one with the largest alliance — but the one capable of preventing the chessboard from becoming a battlefield.