Pakistan's Houthi Ambiguity Ends: Cargo Planes to Aden, and a Saudi Offensive Taking Shape

For weeks, Pakistan's government answered the question of whether it would actually fight the Houthis with careful ambiguity. That ambiguity has a harder edge now: Reuters reported on October 2 that Pakistan sent four cargo planes of weapons to Yemen's Saudi-backed government in September, as Saudi Arabia prepares an offensive to break the Houthis' hold on one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints.

How the Houthis got the chokepoint

The backdrop is a rapid Houthi advance along Yemen's Red Sea coast in September. The Iran-aligned group seized the port city of Mokha around September 10-11, then pushed on to capture Mayyun Island — also called Perim, sitting in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb strait — along with the town of Dhubab and the coastal village of Murad. By mid-September, Houthi forces controlled the entirety of Yemen's Red Sea coastline and, with it, the strait itself, their positions reportedly coming within 20 kilometres of the African coast.

The strait's significance is not abstract. Bab el-Mandeb carries an estimated 12% of global trade, including roughly 11% of the world's seaborne oil and 8% of its LNG. Combined with Iran's separate blockade effort in the Strait of Hormuz — the subject of a war of attrition we've covered in detail — that puts close to a third of the world's maritime trade sitting under some form of hostile control at once.

What Pakistan has reportedly sent

Reuters, citing sources with knowledge of Saudi preparations, reported that Pakistan sent four cargo planes carrying air defence systems, light artillery, drones and anti-drone equipment to Aden in September — the seat of Yemen's internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government. Pakistani military advisers are reported to be on the ground as well, working alongside Saudi counterparts to support Yemeni government forces. Turkiye has reportedly supplied equipment of its own under the same arrangement.

Islamabad has not confirmed these specifics publicly. As we reported on September 30, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said only that Pakistan's "full military capability" is available to Saudi Arabia under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, and declined repeated questions on whether Pakistani forces had already struck Houthi-linked targets. The Reuters reporting doesn't resolve that ambiguity so much as narrow it: a confirmed shipment of hardware and advisers is a different, more concrete category of involvement than the open-ended rhetorical commitment Asif offered five days after Pakistan's, Saudi Arabia's and Turkiye's army chiefs met in Riyadh to work out the pact's operational details.

The offensive Saudi Arabia is now weighing

According to the same Reuters report, Saudi Arabia is considering two options to reverse the Houthis' gains: a narrower assault focused on retaking Bab el-Mandeb itself, or a broader offensive opening multiple fronts in the governorates of Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz and Al-Jawf. The larger option could involve mobilising more than 100,000 Yemeni troops. The six sources Reuters spoke with gave no fixed launch date, with estimates ranging from within a week to sometime after the US midterm elections in early November — a wide enough window that the operation's scale and timing both remain genuinely unsettled.

Why this still matters for Pakistan specifically

Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye in August 2026, a pact declaring an attack on one signatory an attack on all three. We've covered the pact and its first Secretary General as the three governments built out the institutional machinery behind it. What the Reuters reporting suggests is that the machinery is now moving material, not just statements — and that Pakistan is underwriting a Saudi military campaign whose scale and timing are still being decided in Riyadh, not Islamabad. Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously in 2015 to stay neutral in Yemen rather than send troops Riyadh had requested; whether today's arrangement, built on equipment and advisers rather than a parliamentary deployment vote, ends up tested the same way domestically is still an open question.

Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk is tracking Pakistan's role under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement as the Saudi-Houthi conflict moves toward a larger confrontation.