On an demand by opposition senator called for recalling the former army chief to preserve Pakistan’s neutrality Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz said on 21st June2017, that it was not possible to call former army chief retired Gen Raheel Sharif back to the country because he had taken up the command of an international coalition set up by Saudi Arabia for fighting terrorism in his personal capacity and had not been deputed by the government.
The adviser said Islamabad’s position was dictated by the Pakistani foreign policy’s longstanding principle of not getting involved in conflicts between Muslim countries and the 2015 parliamentary resolution of maintaining neutrality on the Yemen issue.
The Islamic Military Alliance (IMA), officially the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) alternative translation Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, is an intergovernmental counter-terrorist alliance of countries in the Muslim world, united around military intervention against ISIL and other counter-terrorist activities. Its creation was first announced by Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Defense, on 15 December 2015. The alliance was to have a joint operations center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
When the coalition was announced there were 34 members. Additional countries joined and the number of members reached 41 when Oman joined in December 2016. On 6 January 2017, Pakistan's former Chief of Army Staff, General (Retd.) Raheel Sharif was named the IMA's first Commander-in-Chief.
Due to the dominance of the alliance by states having majority Sunni Muslim populations, it has been called "a sectarian coalition" by Hakeem Azameli, a member of the Security and Defense Commission in the Iraqi parliament.