A newly signed defence agreement between Somalia and Pakistan has opened a maturation phase in their relations. The document endorsed in Islamabad by Somalia’s Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi and Pakistan’s Khawaja Muhammad Asif was accompanied by a sparse official statement. This discretion suggests a relationship geared more toward outcomes than public declarations with Somalia keen to draw on Pakistan’s military and aviation knowledge. The accord serves as a capstone to previous efforts with the 2025 arrangements that established practical cooperation in naval training, anti piracy operations and logistical vessel support. By consolidating these earlier steps the two nations have moved from a series of discrete projects to a permanent partnership which is protecting Somalia’s territorial sovereignty while constructing a more formidable and self assured security presence in the region.

This axis which also enjoys the implicit backing of constellation including Turkey, Egypt and Qatar is animated by a clear set of interlocking objectives. The defence of Somalia’s federal territorial integrity in which a principle that places it on a direct collision course with the Republic of Somaliland’s three decade quest for international recognition. The temperature of this dispute was raised to a point in late 2025 when Israel formally recognized Somaliland. Federal officials and their allies fear the recognition creates a legal and political pretext for the establishment of foreign military installations, intelligence gathering platforms or maritime presences along a coastline that commands the southern approaches to the Red Sea. The Saudi led consortium’s logic is a unified Somali state however is a known quantity that can be engaged, influenced and integrated into a regional security dominated by the Sunni bloc. 

This logic was given its initial formal expression nearly six months before the Islamabad signing. On 9 February 2026 Minister Fiqi was in Riyadh to sign a military cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with Saudi Arabia. That  agreement similarly sparse in its public specifics established a platform for defence cooperation, training, technical support and crucially the coordination of security efforts in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The February MoU provided the diplomatic canopy under a programme that is now being linked directly to the Pakistani partnership. It is a multi year investment designed to build a Somali National Army that is not only effective against al-Shabaab but politically aligned with Somalia.

The manifestation of this Saudi commitment is the funding and support for the training of a new cohort of Somali National Army recruits. This force numbering between 5,000 and 5,100 personnel is undergoing a nine month training cycle in camps located in Guri’el within the Galgaduud region of Galmudug State. The choice of Galmudug as a training spot is a political one situated as it is in the central Somalia which is a crucial buffer between the federal seat in Mogadishu and the northern territories. A high level Saudi military delegation conducted an inspection of the training facilities in late June and early July of 2026in which a clear signal of the program’s importance to Saudi. The composition of the recruited force is as telling as its location. Reports indicate the cohort includes approximately 2,000 recruits from the Puntland region alongside others drawn from clanships known for their historical opposition to Somaliland’s secessionist project. This demographic engineering suggests a long term vision for a military force whose loyalties and kinship ties make it a particularly effective instrument for reasserting federal control along the contested borderlands.

Initially reporting suggested that the instructional backbone of this training mission consisted of exSudanese and Egyptian army personnel in which a detail that would mesh seamlessly with the contours of a broad Sunni alignment. However, more recent and granular intelligence from the camps reveals a different more commercially oriented yet still geopolitically neutral composition. The instructors running the training on the ground have been identified as a multinational contingent of private military contractors primarily from Romania, Ukraine, South Africa and Colombia. This distinction does not diminish the Saudi role and clarifies the operational mechanism. 

This is where the Pakistan dimension acquires a potentially transformative character. The Saudi underwriting extends to the procurement of military hardware for Somalia is now being substantiated. The element of this is the possibility that  Saudi will finance the acquisition of the JF-17 Thunder which is a multi role combat aircraft jointly developed by Pakistan and China for the Somali Air Force. Such a transaction would be a leap for a country. Integrating the JF17 into this existing training arrangements with Pakistan Air Force expertise would mark the beginning of a rolling, multi year programme of immense complexity and commitment. If this project moves from speculation to signature it would signal a generational bet by Saudi Arabia on a militarily resurgent, federally strong Somalia under its umbrella.

The relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provides the context for these commitments. The two nations elevated their defence partnership in September 2025 with the signing of a Mutual Defence Agreement. The pact was deliberately shrouded with a Saudi official cryptically describing its scope as covering all military means. In a moment of candid vulnerability that was later hurriedly retracted Pakistan’s own Defence Minister reportedly stated that Pakistani military capabilities would be made available under the terms of the agreement. This  opacity creates a powerful deterrent effect. It binds the fate of Pakistani and Saudi security so tightly that the Pakistan and Somalia MoU can be read as an extension of this pact into a new view. It provides a regional structure within which Pakistani air, naval and counterterrorism expertise can be funnelled to Somalia with Saudi funding, creating a pipeline of security assistance that the West or other competitors would find difficult to disrupt. The formal signing between Fiqi and Asif was therefore not a simple bilateral ceremony and it was an induction of the Somali federal project into the outer perimeter of the Saudi andPakistani mutual security guarantee.

The implications of this alignment radiate across the Horn’s entire conflict spectrum. This military build up  tilts the balance in the north. While somalia’s primary objective remains counter insurgency its conventional forces with a politically tailored recruitment base creates the latent capacity for limited kinetic action against Somaliland. The current posture is one of political and legal pressure in which a relentless diplomatic campaign to isolate Somaliland and dissuade any state from following Israel’s lead. Yet the positioning of a hostile force in Galmudug combined with federal generates a high risk environment where low level clashes along the contested border or even military probes are becoming increasingly plausible contingencies. The Sunni axis has not declared an intention to invade Somaliland but it is assembling the military tools and the political rationale for a policy of coercive federal consolidation. The message is that the window for Somaliland’s international recognition is being shut by force of arms and diplomatic weight.

The most geopolitically charged domain is maritime security in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The language in both the Saudi and Pakistani MoUs makes specific reference to this maritime corridor. The formation of a Pakistan and Somali naval training link with potential for future vessel support and coordinated anti piracy patrols is designed to give the Sunni bloc its own independently verifiable security presence in the waterway. This is a direct signal of intent to influence the hard security structure of one of the world’s critical sea lines of communication ensuring that its governance is not dictated by rival coalitions or the foreign powers Somalia suspects of seeking presence through a recognized Somaliland.

The thin official details released by the signatories should not be mistaken for a lack of substance. They constitute the quiet calibration of a regional alliance in the making one that prioritizes effective capacity over declaratory publicity. What is being constructed is a lattice work of financial support from the Arabian Peninsula, doctrinal and technical expertise from South Asia and  a multi sourced supply of tactical training and also a political focal point in Somalia that is increasingly confident in the military card it is assembling. This is the plan for a new balance of power in a region where every new training camp, every pilot trained and every naval exercise conducted reshapes the conflict and competition.

By Samiya Mohammed, Researcher, Horn Review