By Bosphorus News Defense Desk
Pakistan has appointed retired Lieutenant General Nauman Mahmood as the first secretary general of the Mecca Pact, putting a former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) analysis chief and Peshawar Corps commander in charge of its new General Secretariat in Riyadh.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry announced the appointment on September 23. Mahmood, a recipient of the Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Military), will lead the Secretariat as Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan establish the bodies created under the pact.
The post was formalized at the alliance's August 31 meeting in Istanbul, when the three countries agreed to establish the Secretariat in Riyadh and give its first three-year term to a Pakistani secretary general. The same meeting set out joint military activities, closer coordination among the armed forces, defense industry cooperation, joint technology development and production.
A Baloch Regiment officer commissioned in 1987, Mahmood commanded an infantry division in North Waziristan before serving in the analysis arm of the ISI. His official National Defence University biography later listed him as Director General Analysis at the agency.
After his promotion to lieutenant general in 2019, Mahmood served as inspector general of Communications and Information Technology at Pakistan Army General Headquarters. Later that year, he took command of XI Corps in Peshawar.
The corps is responsible for territory along Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan, including areas that have been central to the country's counterterrorism operations.
He handed over XI Corps in November 2021 and became president of Pakistan's National Defence University. He remained at the university until his retirement in April 2023.
Two days after his appointment to the Mecca Pact post, military chiefs from Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia met in Riyadh. They discussed intelligence cooperation, military coordination and capability integration and agreed to begin turning the pact's commitments into military cooperation.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had described the technical work ahead on August 8, one day after the pact was signed. He said the three countries would conduct exercises and training and work on logistics, threat analysis and intelligence sharing.
Fidan also addressed the technical problem of making different weapons and communications systems work together. He said the civilian and military bodies under the new structure would need to develop standards, analyses and assessments.
By September 21, Fidan said work on the secretariat and military headquarters was almost complete. Personnel appointments and the activation of the headquarters were among the remaining steps. Pakistan named Mahmood two days later.
The three foreign ministers met again on September 25 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. They reviewed preparations for the General Secretariat and the creation of committees and working groups. Their full list, composition and mandates have not been made public.
Publicly released documents do not give Mahmood operational command over military forces or intelligence services. They describe the General Secretariat as a body supporting work conducted under the pact.
The Strategic Political and Defence Committee remains the senior body in the published structure, bringing together the three countries' foreign ministers, defense ministers and military chiefs.
Defense industry cooperation is also part of the agreed agenda. The August 31 joint statement calls for cooperation on defense capabilities, joint technology development and joint production. No published decision assigns specific industrial roles to Türkiye, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or places individual weapons programs under the Mecca Pact.
Sources: Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Press Agency, Inter-Services Public Relations, National Defence University Pakistan, Dawn, Army Institute of Military History, Bosphorus News review and reporting.