Pakistan's Frozen Arms Deals Face New Hope as Three Nations Form Military Alliance

Pakistan’s defence sector is sitting on more than $5 billion in frozen contracts, and a new military alliance may, or may not, change that.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed on August 7 by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, commits each signatory to treat an armed attack on any member as an attack on all three, mirroring NATO’s mutual defence principles. For ordinary Pakistanis whose livelihoods depend on the country’s defence export industry, the pact raises an immediate question: will it unlock the multibillion-dollar arms agreements with Sudan and Libya that Riyadh effectively killed earlier this year?

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Those contracts matter. In January, Business Insider Africa reported that Pakistan was moving toward completing a $1.5 billion agreement to supply military equipment and aircraft to Sudan’s Armed Forces, with Saudi Arabia helping broker the arrangement. By April, Riyadh had withdrawn its financing commitment and asked Islamabad to terminate the deal. A Pakistani security source told Reuters at the time: “Saudi Arabia has signaled that Pakistan should terminate the deal after it dropped the idea of financing it.” The reversal reflected Riyadh’s broader reassessment of its role in African conflicts and a desire to avoid deeper entanglement in regional proxy wars.

A separate agreement with Libya faced similar pressure. In December 2025, Pakistani officials disclosed a deal worth more than $4 billion to supply military equipment to forces controlled by eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, despite the existing United Nations arms embargo on Libya. This represented one of Pakistan’s largest defence export contracts. By April, that transaction too had become uncertain because Saudi Arabia was, in the words of Pakistani sources, “revisiting their strategy” in both Sudan and Libya.

Meanwhile, the pressures that produced the Mecca agreement are intensifying. Iran-backed Houthi rebels controlling northern Yemen have announced a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia and targeted its airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea. Attacks on Saudi targets escalated after February 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iranian positions. Turkey’s addition to the pact carries particular weight, bringing one of the region’s largest militaries and a growing defence industry into the arrangement. Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi signalled before the talks that the discussions would extend beyond immediate Gulf tensions. “Although taking place against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Gulf, the visit will carry significance beyond the immediate crisis and short-term considerations,” Andrabi said.

Turkey’s entry is especially relevant to Africa. A July 2026 UK government assessment, citing conflict-monitoring data, places Turkey alongside Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan among countries aligned with or supporting Sudan’s Armed Forces, though the nature and scale of support varies. Ankara has also expanded its engagement with Khalifa Haftar’s eastern Libyan forces, positioning Turkey within the same camp involved in Pakistan’s stalled arms agreements. That alignment could theoretically create space for closer coordination among the three pact members over African conflicts and defence contracts.

No evidence has emerged, however, that the new agreement has triggered a revival of either suspended deal. The UN arms embargo on Libya remains in force. Financial uncertainties persist. At the United Nations in June, Saudi Arabia reiterated its support for Sudan’s territorial integrity, a ceasefire and political talks through the Jeddah process, a posture that sits uneasily alongside any resumption of arms supplies to Khartoum.

The Mecca agreement recalibrates regional security architecture in ways that matter to the workers and officials tied to Pakistan’s defence export ambitions. But the structural barriers that halted the Sudan and Libya deals have not moved. Whether the new diplomatic geometry among Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara eventually shifts those barriers, or simply adds another layer of complexity to an already tangled set of calculations, is the question Pakistan’s defence sector cannot yet answer.