Pakistan's Military Spokesman Finally Says It on Camera: Troops Are in Saudi Arabia

Pakistan's military spent weeks answering one question — are Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia? — with careful non-denials. On October 7, 2026, the answer stopped being ambiguous. DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told CNN: "The forces of Pakistan are already there."

What Chaudhry said, and what he didn't

Chaudhry framed the presence as long-standing rather than new, saying Pakistani troops "have been there for decades, in multiple capabilities" and that the Pakistan-Saudi-Turkiye alliance was not born "out of a vacuum" but out of a "sustained diplomatic, political, military and people-to-people relationship." He called Saudi security commitments "absolute" and described the arrangement as a "collective deterrence." What he did not do was put a number on it: asked how many personnel are deployed and what they are doing, Chaudhry said those details remain classified, beyond characterising the Turkish and Pakistani roles as including a supportive and reconnaissance function.

Why this is news, not just restating old facts

Pakistan has had a small military presence in Saudi Arabia for decades under long-standing training and advisory arrangements — that part of Chaudhry's answer is uncontroversial. What makes the interview notable is that it's the first time a Pakistani official has said, on camera and on record, that forces are present at all, after a month of officials doing the opposite. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on September 30 that Pakistan's "full military capability" was available to Saudi Arabia under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement but repeatedly declined to confirm or deny whether Pakistani forces had struck Houthi-linked targets, as we reported at the time. An October 5 emergency meeting in Riyadh went further, agreeing to the "rapid deployment" of military forces inside Saudi Arabia — but that joint statement, too, gave no troop numbers and no description of what forces would actually do once there, an open question we flagged directly at the time. Reuters reporting in the interim had put unconfirmed, anonymously sourced figures anywhere from 8,000 to 30,000-40,000 Pakistani troops in the kingdom; Chaudhry's interview doesn't resolve that range, but it does end the official silence underneath it.

The timing isn't an accident

Chaudhry gave the interview as Houthi strikes on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport and Abha International Airport killed three people and injured 36, a dramatic escalation we've covered separately. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement in August 2026, declaring an attack on one signatory an attack on all three; with Houthi strikes now reaching civilian airports rather than just border and energy infrastructure, going public with at least a bare confirmation of troop presence functions as its own signal to Sanaa, even without specifics attached.

What's still unknown

Chaudhry's confirmation answers the narrowest version of the question — yes, forces are there — while leaving the two things that actually matter for accountability at home unanswered: how many, and doing what. Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously in 2015 to keep the country out of the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen at the time, a vote that shaped civil-military relations on this exact question for a decade. Whether today's deployment, confirmed in a TV interview rather than a parliamentary debate, gets the same scrutiny domestically is the question Thursday's interview opened rather than closed.

Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk is tracking Pakistan's military commitments under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement as they come into public view.