Jalalpur Canal and Sindh’s Water Rights

Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal announced that the government will place the National Flood Protection Plan IV before the Council of Common Interests for approval. The price tag is now Rs 700 billion. The same plan was approved by the CCI in 2017 at roughly half that amount. The minister was candid: the previous governments failed to implement it, and the 2022 floods forced a revision. Nearly a decade and a half after the plan was first conceived after the 2010 floods that devastated the country, we are back where we started, except the bill has grown by Rs 360 billion. But there is a problem with the numbers, and it is not a small one. In November 2025, Secretary Water Resources Syed Ali Murtaza testified before the Senate Standing Committee on Water Resources that NFPP-IV comprised 375 schemes with a total cost of Rs 824.493 billion. The provincial component alone stood at Rs 746.961 billion, while the federal share was only Rs 77.533 billion. He told the committee that provinces had refused to contribute their shares, escalating the matter to the CCI. Eight months later, the same plan is being presented at Rs 700 billion with a 50-50 federal-provincial split. The total has been trimmed by roughly Rs 124 billion despite inflation and rising cost of construction, and the provinces’ burden has been halved. A plan that shrinks by fifteen percent despite the increased costs and flips its cost-sharing formula in eight months is not rigorously costed. It is still being negotiated politically, not finalized technically. After the 2022 floods, international donors pledged $11 billion for reconstruction and flood protection. Three years later, Pakistan had utilized less than $3 billion. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb admitted that Pakistan failed to prepare a single credible, bankable project to access the funds. The money sat in files while the people sat in mud and water. It is one thing to lack funds. It is quite another to hold the funds and lack the institutional capacity to spend them. So when the government now asks for Rs 700 billion, the question is not whether we need the plan. We do. The question is whether we have earned the right to spend it, or are simply paying compound interest on a decade of negligence. In 2017, When the CCI approved the National Flood Protection Plan in 2017, the Punjab Assembly had already passed the Flood Plain Regulation Act of 2016. That Act designated flood plains, mandated annual surveys, prohibited all construction without written permission, and criminalized unauthorized building. Section 20 gave it overriding effect over all other laws. It was a good, careful law. And for ten years, we ignored it. Then came the 2022 floods, killing more than 1,700 and displacing 33 million. The 2023 Punjab Irrigation Act, strengthened the framework further. . Then came the Infrastructure Audit Programme of January 2026, promising to inspect and certify every embankment before the rains. The NDMA had warned in November 2025 that the 2026 monsoon would bring 22 to 26 percent above-normal rainfall. In May, Chairman Lt Gen Inam Haider Malik was briefed the Emergency Response Committee. The warnings were not classified. They were reported in media across the country. And still, on July 31, as the Sawan rains continue and Bhadoon approaches, we are told that a Rs 700 billion plan is about to be placed before the CCI. The human cost of this incompetence is measured in lives, not spreadsheets. Between June 26 and July 25, 2026, NDMA recorded 97 deaths and 297 injuries in rain-related incidents. House and roof collapses were the leading cause, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reporting the highest toll, followed by Punjab. The authority evacuated 3,841 people. These are not abstract figures. They are preventable losses and deaths in a country that had years to prepare. Meanwhile, last year’s federal budget slashed water sector allocations by 27 percent, from Rs 184.6 billion to Rs 133.4 billion for the water sector. Even the flagship Diamer-Basha Dam saw reduced priority. The message is clear: politically visible projects win funding; invisible embankments lose it. We are also building vulnerability into the landscape faster than we are building protection. The hundred-arch bridge near Shahdara was designed a century ago to let Ravi floodwater pass freely. In September 2025, the M5 motorway near Jalalpur Pirwala collapsed after the Sutlej River breached its banks, blocking natural channels with inadequate culverts. Modern infrastructure is failing where century-old engineering succeeded because hydrology is no longer part of the design brief. Every stakeholder knows what needs to be done. District officials know where encroachments choke flood channels. Engineers know where embankments need reinforcement. Satellite imagery can map floodplains with precision. Yet these tools are shelved while development authorities continue to approve new roads, schools and BHUs for permanent dwellings that should not have been there to begin with.  New high profile housing schemes are regularized in natural river basins. The National Water Policy, approved by the CCI in April 2018, promised real-time telemetry by the end of 2021 and a National Water Council chaired by the Prime Minister to meet annually. Seven years later, the Council has convened only once, in October 2018. The telemetry system is five years past its deadline. The unfinished cost of ongoing water schemes stands at approximately Rs 1.27 trillion. What would it take to believe this time will be different? Not more money. We have enough money to drown in. What we lack is accountability that lives on the riverbank. The Infrastructure Audit of 2026 must be opened to the public, if it was ever done. The names of every certifying officer who signed off on an embankment must be known, and if a structure fails, the officer must stand beside it and explain. And if not, we need to ask why not? The early warning system must learn to speak to the village, not the province. Alerts must name villages and localaties, expected water levels, and designated evacuation routes. They

A familiar and recurring phantom is once again haunting the political and intellectual horizon of Pakistan: the clamor for administrative redistribution and the carving out of new provinces. Whenever structural collapse, economic decay, and institutional governance reach their absolute nadir, the sanctums of power and the opaque enclaves of the establishment begin to chant a singular, predictable refrain. The root of all systemic malady, we are told, lies in the sheer geographical expanse of our existing provinces, and the ultimate panacea is the relentless division of the state. When one scrutinizes the subterranean motives, logical contradictions, and political expediencies governing this discourse, an uncomfortable truth starkly emerges. This persistent endeavor to shift the blame for chronic misgovernance and policy failure onto geographical boundaries, cultural entities, and ethnic identities is merely a resurrection of a time-worn colonial playbook—a deliberate diversion designed to distract the citizenry from real structural grievances while consolidating the apparatus of absolute control. History bears poignant witness to the reality that whenever ruling elites fail to mask their administrative ineptitude, systemic incompetence, and constitutional deviations, they seek refuge behind the seductive mirage of better governance, transforming the republic into an endless laboratory of reckless experimentation. One is compelled to ask: does any sound mind truly accept the medical wisdom of amputating a limb simply because a malignant ulcer has taken root in the arm? Are the pathologies of governance so superficial that merely redrawing cartographic lines will spontaneously engender distributive justice, institutional merit, the rule of law, and administrative transparency? A careful, unvarnished reading of pre-partition South Asian history reveals that this formula of administrative fragmentation was never a native or democratic innovation. Rather, it was a tested and ruthless instrument of British imperialism, rooted entirely in the cynical philosophy of “Divide and Rule.” In October 1905, when Lord Curzon partitioned the sprawling province of Bengal under the alluring and deceptive banner of administrative efficiency, improved governance, and better public service delivery, the official justification was identical to today’s rhetoric: that managing such a vast demographic mass from a single center was untenable. Yet history dealt a merciless blow to that colonial experiment. The people of Bengal rightly perceived the partition as a direct, existential assault on their linguistic, cultural, and political integrity, rising in fierce and unyielding resistance. Ultimately, the imperial master was forced into an ignominious retreat, revoking the partition of Bengal in 1911. That historical episode remains an enduring monument and a stark warning to contemporary rulers who imagine they can trifle with the collective historical memory, cultural affinity, and geographical unity of a populace under the intoxicating influence of unchecked power. From the very inception of Pakistan, the ruling classes consistently spurned the genuine principles of cooperative federalism, choosing instead to enshrine coercive and authoritarian centralism as the ultimate guarantee of their survival. During the formative decades of the republic, when the delicate question of distributing democratic rights among diverse constituent units arose, the dominant factions lacked the political maturity required for a pluralistic state. Instead, they forced all the western provinces and states into an unnatural straitjacket known as the “One Unit” scheme. That dark chapter of authoritarian engineering laid bare the callous indifference of the ruling elite toward the historical identities and rich diversity of the people, subjugating all societal bonds to the preservation of concentrated power. When that forced administrative edifice eventually fractured under the weight of unrelenting public resistance, the four-province federal structure was reluctantly conceded. Yet the true spirit of federalism was never allowed to breathe. The constitutional imperatives of provincial autonomy were systematically subverted, resources were inequitably distributed, and the unquenchable thirst for hegemony converted the federation into a fragile, crisis-ridden entity perpetually at war with its own constituent parts. Renowned scholars and theorists of public administration and cooperative federalism universally agree that when any sub-national unit exceeds optimal parameters in territory and population, it inevitably succumbs to bureaucratic inertia and administrative paralysis. According to global academic consensus, effective public service delivery demands a balanced proportional equilibrium between geography and demography, ensuring that the writ of the state and essential services penetrate even the most peripheral districts. However, the high-performing federal democracies of the world—such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Germany—do not achieve excellence in governance merely because their constituent units happen to be geographically compact. They succeed because they rigorously enforce the foundational principle of **Subsidiarity**, which dictates that governance decisions must always be executed at the lowest possible tier capable of addressing them, rather than being arrogated by a distant center or provincial capital. Conversely, the powerful elite who orchestrate policy from behind the veil in Pakistan remain profoundly detached from this philosophical prerequisite. The core issue here is not the mere physical size of a province; it is the centralization of coercive power, deep-seated fiscal distortions, and a bankrupt political intent. In a country like Pakistan, where provinces already depend abjectly on federal transfers through the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, attempting to carve out new provinces without addressing the fundamentals of fiscal federalism will only exponentially multiply the economic burden. If one merely replicates provincial capitals, bloated cabinets, and superfluous administrative secretariats without dismantling the underlying corruption, nepotism, and systemic incompetence, the public will find no relief from their miseries. Instead, the state will be pushed deeper into fiscal insolvency and bureaucratic suffocation. This brings us to the most fundamental and inescapable question: if four provinces were to be multiplied into eight, sixteen, or thirty-six administrative units tomorrow, would traditional political parties magically vanish? Would the actors occupying the corridors of power in these new provinces descend from another planet, or would they simply be the identical political dynasties and entrenched interest groups of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Pakistan Muslim League, or Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf donning new nameplates? When the foundational structural architecture, the prevailing political culture, and the patronage networks of the elite remain utterly unaltered, how can the mere shifting of administrative borders dissolve the cancer of corruption, the

Noreen Niazi, sister of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder Imran Khan, made controversial remarks in a widely circulated podcast that drew widespread criticism across Pakistan. She alleged that the military confrontation with India, referred to in Pakistan as Marka-e-Haq (Battle of Truth), was a staged event rather than a genuine act of national defence and claimed there was a secret understanding between the Pakistan Army and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to mislead the Pakistani public. She further alleged that Israel and the United States were behind the conflict, claiming India acted under Israeli influence to pressure Pakistan into recognizing Israel through the Abraham Accords, that Pakistan’s government and military had secretly contacted Israeli officials, and that praise from US President Donald Trump for Pakistan’s leadership was part of this alleged agenda. She admitted she had no official information or evidence for these claims and had reached them through her own reasoning, prompting critics to dismiss the allegations as baseless misinformation that undermined the Pakistan Army, the country’s foreign policy, and the sacrifices of its soldiers. Her remarks triggered legal and political condemnation. The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency issued her a legal notice and summons, accusing her of spreading false, offensive, and inflammatory content intended to defame state institutions, harm national unity, and warning of legal consequences under Section 174 of the Pakistan Penal Code if she failed to comply. Political leaders, including Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari, condemned the remarks, linked them to Imran Khan’s political outlook, argued they were contrary to Pakistan’s national interests and achievements, and warned they could be exploited by hostile foreign media to damage the country’s image. Her allegations about Israel were also rejected as inconsistent with Pakistan’s longstanding foreign policy, which supports the Palestinian cause, rejects recognition of Israel until an independent Palestinian state is established on the pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, and was reaffirmed by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif in May 2026. Pakistan’s passport, which remains invalid for travel to Israel, was also cited as evidence contradicting claims of secret normalization efforts. The Marka-e-Haq operation itself was a monumental moment for Pakistan that redefined the country’s military strategy and deterrence capability. The operation was not just a simple skirmish but a carefully planned and executed response to aggression that showcased the exceptional capabilities of the Pakistan Army and the Air Force. The armed forces, through coordinated leadership and superior tactics, successfully foiled any Indian attempts to escalate the conflict. The entire operation demonstrated Pakistan’s resolve to defend its borders at all costs and highlighted the nation’s advancements in modern warfare and technology. The Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations provided a detailed briefing to the nation, outlining the ten strategic outcomes of the Marka-e-Haq. He explained how the operation transformed the nature of warfare and re-established a balance of power in the region. The entire Pakistani nation, from the northern areas to the southern coast, united in support of its military and celebrated the professionalism and bravery displayed by the armed forces. This unity was a source of immense strength and sent a clear message to the international community about the resilience of the Pakistani nation. It is this very success and the strengthening of national unity that act as a major irritant for the country’s enemies, both internal and external. Those who seek to destabilize Pakistan and weaken its military understand that a strong and confident army is the biggest obstacle to their nefarious plans. Therefore, they continuously resort to such malicious propaganda, attempting to create divisions and lower the morale of the forces. The false narratives propagated by individuals like Noreen Niazi are thus seen as a direct tool of these enemies to achieve their destabilizing objectives. The Pakistani nation, with its rich history of resilience and unwavering patriotism, has categorically rejected these heinous and baseless narratives. The people of Pakistan are not naive, and they are fully capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, especially when it concerns the defence and integrity of their homeland. The anger expressed on social media and in public gatherings shows that the public is fully aware of the sacrifices made by the armed forces. They recognize that the soldiers serving on the borders are the nation’s heroes and that any attack on them is an attack on the country itself. This widespread public condemnation has actually served to strengthen the bond between the people and the military. The false narratives, instead of creating doubt, have opened the eyes of the nation even further and have made it easier for the average citizen to differentiate between those who work for the country’s prosperity and those who, driven by selfish political interests, are willing to jeopardize the nation’s security for their own gain. The people are demanding that strict action be taken against all such elements, regardless of their political background or connections. They believe that the law must take its course and that such individuals must be held accountable for their words and actions. The unity and resilience of the Pakistani nation remain unshakable, and such cowardly attempts to create discord and spread lies will only serve to strengthen the resolve of the people to defend their motherland and its institutions. The state is determined to protect its ideological and geographical frontiers, and with the full backing of its patriotic populace, it will successfully thwart all such attempts to undermine its stability and sovereignty.

Pakistan has entered a crucial phase in its constitutional and administrative journey. With a population exceeding 250 million, the governance model that served the country decades ago is increasingly being questioned. Recent public discussions, including remarks by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi advocating a debate on administrative reforms in light of Pakistan’s growing population, have reignited an important national conversation: Is it time to rethink how Pakistan is governed? In my view, the answer is yes. The real challenge is not simply whether Pakistan should create more provinces. The real challenge is how governance can be brought closer to the people. A modern state cannot be effectively administered through excessive centralization when its population, economy, and urban centers have expanded dramatically over the past several decades. The first and most important reform should be the empowerment of local governments. District administrations, metropolitan authorities, and municipal governments should be given genuine constitutional authority, financial autonomy, and administrative independence. Citizens interact with government primarily through local institutions. Therefore, healthcare, education, sanitation, water supply, transport, municipal planning, and public safety should be managed by empowered local governments rather than through an overly centralized administrative structure. Karachi represents the strongest example of why governance reform has become a necessity rather than a choice. As Pakistan’s largest city and economic engine, Karachi deserves a governance model specifically designed for a modern global megacity. Despite its enormous contribution to the national economy, the city continues to face serious challenges in urban planning, infrastructure, traffic management, public transport, water supply, waste management, and municipal administration. In my opinion, simply placing Karachi under direct federal control would not automatically solve these problems. The federal government already carries enormous national responsibilities, and transferring administrative authority without structural reforms may simply relocate existing governance challenges. Instead, Karachi requires a metropolitan governance model comparable to internationally recognized cities such as New York, where professional city administration, clearly defined institutional responsibilities, strong municipal leadership, effective policing coordination, urban planning, and financial autonomy work together under a comprehensive metropolitan framework. Such a model could improve service delivery while ensuring greater accountability and long-term planning. Governance reform should not stop at strengthening local governments. Pakistan should also seriously consider creating additional provinces wherever there is genuine administrative need, broad public consultation, and constitutional consensus. Smaller provinces can improve administrative efficiency, strengthen regional representation, and make governments more responsive to local communities. More representative provincial structures can also help ensure that the concerns of both urban and rural populations receive greater attention at the national level. Equally important is the devolution of administrative authority to districts and local institutions. Excessive concentration of political and administrative power often limits opportunities for ordinary citizens to influence decisions that directly affect their lives. A stronger local government system would enable communities to participate more effectively in governance while improving transparency, accountability, and public service delivery. This debate should never be viewed as an attempt to weaken Sindh or divide its people. On the contrary, I believe these reforms would strengthen Sindh by ensuring that development and decision-making reach every corner of the province. Whether someone lives in Kandhkot, Larkana, Mithi, Islamkot, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Hyderabad, Thatta, or Karachi, every citizen deserves equal access to quality healthcare, education, infrastructure, clean drinking water, municipal services, and economic opportunities. An equally important aspect of this reform process is public awareness and civic education. Pakistan needs a network of credible academics, constitutional experts, economists, retired civil servants, educationists, and respected members of civil society who can engage directly with communities across Sindh, particularly in rural and underserved areas where access to balanced political information may be limited. Their role should be to explain, in Sindhi and other local languages, the constitutional, administrative, and economic implications of decentralization, stronger local governments, and, where appropriate, the creation of additional provinces. Many citizens hear conflicting political narratives about these proposals. In my view, people should be encouraged to evaluate reforms on the basis of evidence, administrative efficiency, and public welfare rather than fear or political rhetoric. If these reforms genuinely improve representation, accountability, and service delivery, they should be supported regardless of political interests. Ultimately, the objective should not be to benefit any political party but to empower every citizen and ensure that governance serves the people instead of entrenched centers of power. Unfortunately, discussions about administrative reform are often overshadowed by political narratives that generate fear and misunderstanding. In my opinion, governance reforms should be evaluated on their administrative merits rather than through the lens of partisan politics. Citizens should be encouraged to examine whether decentralisation would improve their quality of life instead of viewing every proposal as a political contest. Meaningful reform also requires strengthening independent institutions, ensuring merit-based appointments, improving accountability, and modernising public administration. Whether Pakistan ultimately retains its parliamentary system or chooses another constitutional framework, lasting success will depend upon transparent institutions, professional governance, and effective local administration. Pakistan’s future does not depend merely on drawing new boundaries on a map. It depends upon building a governance system that places citizens—not bureaucracy or political centralization, at the center of public administration. Strong local governments, empowered districts, efficient metropolitan administrations, and, where constitutionally appropriate, additional provinces can together create a stronger federation, a more prosperous Sindh, and a better future for every Pakistani. A prosperous Pakistan will be built not through the concentration of power, but through the fair and effective distribution of power to the people.

(When the water rises, who shows up and who is left waiting?) ‎I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. When the water rises in Muskingum County or the Punjab plains, who shows up, and who is left waiting? I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. ‎ ‎My mother and brother still live right near South Zanesville, just a stone’s throw from Crooksville. When heavy rains hit Perry and Muskingum counties, I don’t need to be there to know what it looks like. I can picture the heavy, chocolate-brown water backing up into the low spots, the damp chill that settles into a basement, the fears of what if the waters reach a house trailer, and that specific, exhausting smell of river mud that takes weeks to scrub out of porch boards and carpet. The worries of if the home has structural damage.. Halfway across the world in Pakistan, the landscape couldn’t look more different. But when monsoon season swells the rivers across the Punjab, the view from the ground is hauntingly identical. ‎ ‎Standing in a flooded doorway feels the same whether you are in Ohio or Lahore. The quiet shock is the same. The ruin of things you worked years to buy is the same. And the very first instinct is to grab your coat, shovel, a chainsaw and a pair of boots and go check on the elderly woman next door.. Start hauling wet furniture, debris to the curb and giving comfort, food and basics to those in need is entirely universal. Watching both worlds at once makes you look at governance differently. It strips away abstract political jargon and leaves you asking one fundamental question: When a community is hit with a crisis, does its system build capable people who can act, or does it leave them sitting on their hands, waiting for permission to survive? ‎ ‎What a Small Ohio Village Taught Me About Governance ‎ ‎Growing up around South Zanesville and Crooksville, you learn pretty early that small-town life relies on a very specific kind of quiet, distributed agency. ‎Crooksville isn’t a rich town. It’s a hard-working Appalachian village of under 1,500 people. But when the creek overflows, nobody sits around waiting for a press conference out of Washington, D.C., or a mandate from the state capital in Columbus. ‎ ‎The response moves in waves because the connections are already wired: ‎On the local levels we see neighbor checks on neighbor. The volunteer fire department turns on the sirens, pulls out the high-water gear, and starts the door to door knocks. At the County level we have the Perry County 911 dispatch and Emergency Management Agency (EMA) start tracking water levels and routing equipment where it’s needed most. At the State level, If the county gets overwhelmed, pre set legal triggers immediately call in the Ohio EMA or the National Guard. ‎ ‎Government here doesn’t replace the community’s instinct to help itself; it validates it, organizes it, and backs it up with real resources. The system trusts the people on the ground to know their own roads. Here in Pakistan, the human spirit is just as generous, if not more so. The impulse toward hospitality, neighborly charity, and mutual support runs incredibly deep. When disaster strikes, ordinary citizens open their wallets and their homes without a second thought. It’s just what they do… ‎ ‎And Pakistan’s has one of the world’s top class military engineering, a massive national disaster agency (the NDMA), and incredible private charities. The raw capacity is immense. Yet, too often, there is a however a very heartbreaking disconnect between that high-level power and the family standing in ankle deep water in a local neighborhood. An ordinary citizen here once described the country to me using a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: a child that was never allowed to stand on its own feet. An infant isn’t helpless because it lacks potential. It’s helpless because it hasn’t been given the space to build muscle, fall over, adjust its balance, and try again. If an authority figure picks the child up every single time it tries to pull itself up, the child never learns to walk—not from a lack of ability, but because the environment denied it the chance to build strength. ‎ ‎That is how systemic learned dependency takes root: Central authorities assume total control, bypassing local municipal councils. Neighborhoods are given no real budget or authority to fix their own drainage or organize local response teams. And when a flood comes, citizens have no choice but to wait for distant, top-down relief. The authorities look at the waiting crowd and say, “See? The people can’t manage without us.” ‎We witness power centralized even further, deepening the exact helplessness it claims to fix. Over generations, people adapt to the system they are given. If a system rewards waiting for a political patron, people learn to wait for patrons. If it rewards local initiative, communities build habits of self-reliance. It is very easy to blame culture or public apathy for civic passivity, but that misses the point entirely. Culture simply reflects the structural incentives people are given to survive and adapt. It is nature vs nurture and we have a break down when these two things fail to promote a cohesiveness and inclusion of what is a community and what that actually means. ‎ ‎Across the globe, the relationship between state control and citizen participation varies wildly, proving that central authority does not have to mean public powerlessness. In China, a deeply centralized state framework actively structures and expects local neighborhood committees and civil volunteer groups to manage community-level crises. Across much of Europe, comprehensive state safety nets exist alongside highly empowered municipal councils and professionalized local volunteer forces.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye have signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August in 2026 and this signing is far more significant than what ceremony and symbolism it carries. Signed in Makkah by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the deal provides that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be considered as an attack against all the three countries.  But its sincerity was greatest not in the denouncing of a specific enemy but in an understanding of the strategic environment which has produced an enemy. It is not a moment for defining the agreement as an “anti-Iran, anti-Israel, anti-American pact. There’s no mentioning of any of these states being specifically called out as the target state. Instead, the agreement seems to be part of a larger strategic pivot amid a more complicated security landscape in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan have divergent agenda in foreign-policy, but all three countries have an interest in lessening strategic vulnerability while gaining more ‘room for manoeuvre’. For the capital of the Hejaz, the key strategic priority is defending its territory, which contains important military bases, energy resources and trading lines, set in a much-changing environment. Saudi Arabia has close relations with Washington, but its foreign policy in recent years has been firmly founded on a strong sense of need for building more than one strategic partnership with the outside world. As such, the Makkah deal is more a tool for “strategic hedging” and less a statement of opposition to a specific regime. The participation of Türkiye is especially significant. While Ankara is a NATO country, it is also developing an autonomous regional foreign policy. In particular the dealings of its government with Iran, Russia, the Gulf monarchies, Europe, and the United States make it difficult to pigeonhole current Turkish strategy into a neat geopolitical box. The importance of this in the context of Türkiye’s presence in the country is such that shooting multi-alignment rather than sectarian or bloc confrontation. On the other hand, Pakistan has years of defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia and a growing institutionalized strategic ties with Türkiye. The deal provides Islamabad a chance to take the existing military cooperation into a larger strategic partnership. However, Pakistan needs to prudently guard its ties with the neighbouring country Iran as well as its ancestral ties with Saudi Arabia and also protect and carry forward its strategic partnership with China. The most sensible thing for Pakistan to do, then, is not bloc politics but calibrated multi-alignment. Particularly noted is Egypt’s non-participation in the defence pact, but it is too early to draw a clear conclusion that the country had been denied its membership due to the influence of any other country, including the United States and Israel. Indeed, Egypt has been continuing its strong partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan within the framework of R4. In June 2026, all four countries’ foreign ministers met in Cairo and reiterated their efforts in the realm of consultation and regional stability and coordinated diplomacy.  This isn’t necessarily a foreign veto in action, then, that Egypt is not a party to a certain military arrangement, but could be partly because of its own strategic decisions. The same level of skepticism should be applied towards the general pronouncements about Israel. As Türkiye’s rival relationship with Tel Aviv and the Saudi Arabia’s major role in the Arab-Israeli conflict weighs in, Israel will increasingly be considered a part of the “strategic equation” of the region. However, to date there is no visible evidence that the Makkah agreement was essentially a plan against Israel. Likewise, any potential Pakistani naval base at Pasni or the potential major shift of Pakistan’s maritime strategy should be viewed currently not as policy, but as potential options. The rising significance of geography at sea is much more evident. National security is entangling in increasing ways with the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea and network of commercial and energy corridors. Nowadays, ports and shipping routes are not just economic infrastructure, but strategic assets, in a world of geopolitical dynamics and fragile supply networks. This geographical locational aspect highlights the significance attributed to Pakistan as going beyond its geographical limelight in geography. Chances are on the rise that China will play a key role in this new order. Beijing has already got noticeable economic presence in Pakistan and the Gulf countries, and importantly, it has built a long-term strategic presence in the Indian Ocean via the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC. However, China has tended towards more flexible economic and diplomatic ties rather than military alliances. Saudi-Türkiye-Pakistan cooperation thus puts Beijing in a stronger position to maintain room for manoeuvre within the new framework without having to join it formally. The emerging picture is rather not that of a straightforward American power-substitution than one of an American power-displacement. Instead, the Middle East seems to be shifting towards a more pluralist and networked security configuration, in which governments have multiple relations with rival entities at the same time. Saudi Arabia can cooperate with the US and work towards closer ties with Pakistan and Türkiye; Türkiye can be in NATO and yet have a policy of its own in the region; Pakistan can have closer relationship with China, and Saudi Arabia and Türkiye; and at the same time take part in the dialogue between Pakistan and Iran and the West. After signing the Makkah agreement, its ultimate effect will be determined. Though it might turn into a regular framework of intelligence sharing, joint exercises, defence production and operational co-ordination it could serve as a lasting centrepiece of regional security. Its impact will be more limited, if it is kept largely declaratory. But at this time the most credible inference is that the Makkah pact is far from being an alliance against a common enemy but rather a strategy for the breakdown of one