Paper Fleet, Real Leverage: Pakistan’s Import-Dependent Navy And What It Means For Somalia

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The Pakistan Navy, outwardly draped in the garb of modernity, is a construct not of its own foundries but of foreign favour. Its hulls are hammered in Chinese and Turkish shipyards, its electronics wired with imported circuits, its sustainability chained to the generosity of external creditors. The MoU with Somalia, which promises to build a 'self-reliant maritime force', thus carries a paradox – how can a navy that floats on borrowed steel teach autonomy to another still finding its sea legs?

To understand the illusion, one must look beneath the varnish of press releases and patriotic fanfare.

According to data collated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), over 75 per cent of Pakistan’s naval inventory since 2010 originates from abroad. The Hangor-class submarines, modelled on China’s Type-039A, are built in Wuhan, not Karachi; the Type-054A/P frigates are delivered turnkey from Shanghai; and the Milgem(Babur)-class corvettes, though assembled at Karachi Shipyard & Engineering Works, are effectively Turkish vessels wearing Pakistani colours. Even the surveillance drones that hover over Karachi’s coastline owe their eyes to Shenzhen. The entire fleet, in essence, is a maritime showroom of Chinese and Turkish craftsmanship.

These acquisitions are financed not by domestic capital but through a web of concessional loans and deferred payments. Beijing’s Export-Import Bank underwrites the submarines; Turkey extends soft credit for the Milgems; maintenance contracts are pegged to long-term service agreements that keep foreign technicians indispensable. 

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When Islamabad signs ‘transfer-of-technology’ clauses, what it receives is not the machinery to build but the license to assemble. The difference is subtle, yet fatal to sovereignty. For every imported valve or sonar array, a fragment of autonomy is pawned.

Now this dependence is being exported. Somalia’s defence pact with Pakistan envisions technical training, platform maintenance, and naval capacity-building. Yet each of these deliverables loops back to Pakistan’s foreign suppliers. 

The expertise Pakistan offers to Mogadishu is itself derivative – a relay of Chinese manuals and Turkish doctrine, translated through the lens of a borrower. Should a Somali patrol boat trained under this programme need spare parts or upgrades, they would likely flow not from Karachi but from shipyards in Istanbul or Shanghai. In that sense, Somalia’s maritime independence would begin already indebted to the same constellation of lenders that girds Pakistan.

Consider the Hangor project’s delays – a two-year lag blamed on financing snags in Pakistan’s foreign-exchange reserves.

The State Bank’s balance sheets reveal a defence import bill ballooning even as development expenditure shrinks. When Islamabad struggles to service its own naval credit lines, how credible is its promise to sustain another nation’s maritime training? If Islamabad falters, will Beijing or Ankara quietly step in to ‘assist’ Somalia directly, thereby extending their own reach under Pakistan’s diplomatic flag? The geometry of dependency thickens with each layer.

Proponents in Rawalpindi frame the MoU as a gesture of solidarity among Muslim nations, but the subtext reads like a balance-sheet transaction. China gains a proxy channel to the Horn of Africa without formally docking its flag; Turkey secures a foothold in an emerging maritime corridor; Pakistan earns diplomatic relevance as an intermediary, albeit one whose leverage is borrowed. 

For Somalia, this triangulation may appear as opportunity – new ships, new training, new friends – yet beneath the surface lies the risk of a foreign echo chamber where every decision, every procurement, must pass through multiple capitals before reaching Mogadishu’s own.

The implications are not abstract. If a Somali officer graduates from Pakistan’s Naval War College, his curriculum will mirror the doctrines Islamabad itself imports: joint anti-submarine operations refined during China-Pakistan ‘Sea Guardian’ drills, convoy tactics modelled on PLA(N) standards, even communication protocols patterned after Turkish fleet manoeuvres. What Somalia receives, therefore, is a composite naval identity – part Chinese, part Turkish, faintly Pakistani – but scarcely Somali.

Strategically, such an arrangement folds the Horn of Africa into the wider lattice of China’s Belt and Road maritime strategy. A navy trained by Pakistan is, by extension, trained through China’s templates. It is not the transference of knowledge but the diffusion of influence, elegantly disguised as cooperation. 

Somalia’s harbours may soon echo with the same accents of dependency that resonate along Gwadar or Hambantota – ports where local control has been traded for distant patronage.

In the end, the Pakistan Navy’s gleaming hulls tell a story less of power than of procurement. They float because creditors permit them to. And through the MoU with Somalia, that fragility may now ripple across another coastline. If the intention was to strengthen the seas against future pirates, the irony is cruel: a new kind of piracy emerges, one where sovereignty itself is quietly boarded, its flag lowered, and its command signed over to those who sold the ships.