New Delhi (Somalia Today) — A new defense cooperation agreement between Somalia and Pakistan, approved by Mogadishu’s cabinet in late August 2025, has triggered analysis and concern in Indian media.
Somali officials have presented the pact, along with similar agreements with Jordan and Qatar, as a standard part of a broader push to professionalize and modernize the nation’s security forces after decades of conflict.
Analysts writing in India’s press argue that the deal’s structure could institutionalize Pakistani influence at the heart of Somalia’s rebuilding navy.
Somalia is working to reconstruct its state institutions, including a navy that largely disintegrated after 1991. The nation is tasked with securing mainland Africa’s longest coastline (over 3,300 km).
According to UN security reporting, the primary challenge is coordinating a complex array of international partners—including Turkey, the US, and the EU—to build a coherent national force without fragmenting its command.
Why the JDCC matters?
Somali state and independent outlets report that the Pakistan agreement includes naval training, anti-piracy coordination, and technical assistance for vessels. The agreement also establishes an annual Joint Defence Cooperation Committee (JDCC) to “review and steer implementation.”
Indian commentators argue that while an annual committee sounds administrative, it can become a hinge for turning routine assistance into a recurring architecture of influence.
These analysts contend that such a committee holds “process power.” Annual reviews approve curricula for young officers, lock in maintenance chains for equipment, and set the tempo for joint patrols.
Commentators say these are the mundane acts that, when repeated, shape the core doctrine, logistics, and institutional memory of a small navy being rebuilt from scratch.
Indian media analysis suggests it is this design—embedding a permanent process—that is the core of their concern, rather than the offer of training itself.
What Indian outlets argue?
The Sunday Guardian has warned that the JDCC risks creating a “parallel military influence” in the Horn of Africa. The outlet argued that the agreement, if its committee operates in an opaque manner, could undermine other international efforts to build Somali capacity with greater transparency.
The concern, it says, is not who teaches a course, but who sets the agenda that the courses serve.
Zee News has advanced this argument through the lens of dependence. Its coverage contended that training, manuals, and maintenance tied to a single provider can produce “sticky after-markets.” This, it argues, leaves the recipient institution informally aligned with the donor’s vendors, reliant on specific spare-parts pipelines and technical documentation that are costly and difficult to unwind.
In that reading, Zee News says the annual review committee matters because it is the forum that “blesses the plumbing of dependence” by approving the syllabi, workshop schedules, and depot contracts that create this reliance.
A third view, articulated by the nationalist outlet TFIpost, casts the agreement in geopolitical terms. It depicted the pact as an “expanding grip” over Somali waters, placing Pakistani trainers and technicians astride the strategic approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
From New Delhi’s perspective, Somalia sits directly along India’s vital western sea lines of communication. TFIpost argues that institutionalizing Pakistani participation in Somali maritime planning yields practical access and awareness in a corridor India views as strategically sensitive.
Why Turkey and China?
This concern, Indian media contend, is compounded by the new pact joining other international defense agreements. Commentaries repeatedly noted that Turkey, for example, already runs what they describe as the region’s most consequential training mission in Somalia.
Turkey broadened its portfolio under a major 2024 defense-and-economy framework that includes maritime support.
Zee News has argued the risk is “two patrons, one fleet,” potentially resulting in parallel vendor ecosystems, overlapping training doctrines, and donor-driven priorities that complicate Somalia’s ability to operate with other partners—including India—who may wish to cooperate at sea.
Beyond the risk of fragmentation with partners like Turkey, Asian Lite has suggested that procedures and standards refined in China-Pakistan “Sea Guardian” naval drills tend to travel with Pakistani trainers.
According to that analysis, this could seed China-compatible standards into Somali forces, not through explicit basing rights, but indirectly through curriculum and maintenance practices.
Indian analysts cited by these outlets say a Somali navy aligned with a China-adjacent ecosystem could complicate future information-sharing and anti-piracy coordination with India.
How to safeguard sovereignty?
The Government of India has issued no formal statement squarely addressing the pact. The “concern” is, for now, a media-led narrative in India, not an official diplomatic protest.
Somalia Today sought comment from the Ministry of Defence on the Indian media concerns and the governance structure of the new committee. The ministry did not immediately respond to emailed questions sent at 16:00 local time.
While Somali officials have pitched the new pacts as components of a sovereign modernization drive, analysts say reconciling that goal with external partnerships requires robust governance safeguards.
Safeguards could include publishing all committee agendas and minutes, attaching technical annexes, and disclosing procurement details to parliament.
Somalia could also seat multilateral observers from existing coordination cells to ensure that decisions integrate with regional frameworks and enforce open, interoperable standards across all training and maintenance to prevent vendor lock-in.
The debate will likely widen as more details surface. But India’s unease, as reflected in its press, is clear: commentators argue the pact risks institutionalizing a seat for Islamabad inside the day-to-day choices that steer Somalia’s navy. Whether that risk materializes, they say, depends entirely on governance.
