Hands off Medina

Medina is the city where the Prophet Muhammad rests, and his mosque is a place where grown men weep without embarrassment. When word spread this week that a drone had hit the power station feeding it, anger followed grief in homes across Pakistan and far beyond. Believers who have never seen the city felt it as an attack on something they carry inside them.

A drone does not need to destroy much to send a message. On Sept. 29, one struck the Taibah power distribution station in Medina, a civilian facility that supplies electricity to the Prophet’s Mosque. The Saudi-led coalition said the strike knocked a single transformer out of service and left the grid running. Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki said an examination of the debris established Houthi involvement.

The damage was minor. The choice of target was not. Medina holds the second holiest mosque in Islam, and whoever aimed at its power supply knew whose sensibilities they were testing.

Pakistan answered on Friday without hedging. The Foreign Ministry called the strike a “grave provocation” and demanded an “immediate and unconditional” end to such actions. “We stand firmly with Saudi Arabia,” the ministry said, adding its support for the kingdom’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Pakistan’s defense cooperation with the kingdom dates to the 1960s. In September 2025 the two countries signed a defense pact declaring that aggression against one would count as aggression against both. Islamabad then said publicly that the agreement was purely defensive and aimed at no third country. That sequence shows a government that writes its commitments down, explains their limits and honors them when tested.

Pakistan has also stood guard over the holy cities before. When militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979, Pakistani forces were widely reported to have helped Saudi authorities retake it. Accounts of the exact role vary, but the later record is clear. Up to 15,000 Pakistani troops served in the kingdom through the 1970s and 1980s, and during the 1990-91 Gulf War Pakistan sent soldiers to protect the Islamic holy sites.

Pakistan also draws a line that critics tend to miss. In 2015 its parliament voted to keep the country out of the Yemen war, a decision that drew sharp words from some Gulf officials. Pakistan has no appetite for Yemen’s civil war and no quarrel with Yemenis, who face a hunger crisis of their own. The U.N. food agency says nearly three in four households in parts of the country cannot meet basic food needs.

What Pakistan rejects is narrower. No grievance about Yemen’s future, however sincere, justifies aiming a drone at the infrastructure that keeps the lights on at the Prophet’s Mosque. A government can oppose a war and still refuse to tolerate this.

For Pakistanis the issue is personal. Hundreds of thousands travel to Medina and Mecca every year, and many more live and work in the kingdom. Picture a retired schoolteacher from Multan who spent a decade saving for Umrah. When the Foreign Ministry says the safety of worshippers and pilgrims “must be respected under all circumstances,” it speaks for her.

Pakistan has also spent two decades fighting terrorists who treat civilians and public infrastructure as fair targets. Its officials know how an assault on a market or a power line looks from the inside, and that experience lends their condemnation weight.

Pakistan’s value in moments like this comes from its position. It keeps working relations with most capitals in the Muslim world and has resisted pressure to become anyone’s proxy. That independence lets it condemn an attack on Medina without turning the statement into a bloc maneuver. It also lets Islamabad press for what it has long favored in Yemen, a settlement negotiated by Yemenis rather than imposed by weapons.

A drone that reaches Medina’s grid today invites a bolder probe tomorrow if nobody answers, and the 2025 pact exists so that no one miscalculates about Riyadh’s friends. Condemnation is the floor. The coalition should finish its investigation and share the evidence with partners. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation should adopt language as direct as Islamabad’s. Governments with influence over the Houthis should tell them plainly that holy sites are off limits.

Medina belongs to no faction and no front line. A country that says so before the next drone launches, and backs the words with a treaty, is behaving the way a friend should.