Pakistan, Sept. 26 -- The Makkah agreement is about to discover what collective defence means when missiles are already in the air. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye called an urgent meeting of their military chiefs after another barrage of Houthi missiles against the Kingdom, even as their foreign ministers used their meeting in New York to work through the secretariat, committees and procedures of a pact barely seven weeks old. Two days earlier, Lt Gen (retd) Nauman Mahmood had been named its first secretary-general.

There is much more riding on the military meeting than the question of what assistance Riyadh may receive. Six ballistic missiles were intercepted on Thursday as warnings sounded around Makkah, Jeddah and Yanbu, days afte...