OPINION | Lessons from Hambantota: Will Mogadishu Become the Next Pawn?

by Commodore Ranjit Rai (Retd)

Hambantota’s Shadow

When Sri Lanka signed away Hambantota Port on a 99 year lease to China, the world witnessed a 21st century case study, in how debt is turned into dominion. how promises of development mutate into instruments of control, and how sovereignty is mortgaged in the name of partnership. That episode, so often cited in any discussion pertinent to the Belt and Road Initiative, now looms like a spectre over Somalia’s newly approved Defence Cooperation MoU with Pakistan, a pact that outwardly reads as harmless training and technical support but inwardly whispers of trajectories far more consequential.

The MoU in Detail

The document, approved by Mogadishu’s Cabinet at the end of August, stipulates a five–year period of cooperation. Pakistan is all set to offer training in its Staff and War Colleges, provide assistance for vessel maintenance, set up naval units, and extend help in counter–terrorism and peacekeeping preparations; meanwhile a joint defence cooperation committee is to meet annually, ensuring continuity and oversight. On its face, the MoU is procedural, even generous. Yet every clause carries echoes of Hambantota, where early assurances of partnership gradually crystallised into dependency, and dependency ossified into concession.

Pakistan’s Position and China’s Hand

Pakistan presents itself as a benefactor, but its own position in the global financial system is precarious at best. With repeated recourse to IMF bailouts and an economy buckling under inflation, it lacks the fiscal muscle to act as an independent donor. Its largesse in Somalia is not sourced from surplus strength, but from borrowed influence, most of it Chinese. Each training slot, each maintenance programme, each advisory committee is therefore less a Pakistani gift than a Chinese investment, laundered through an ally whose own autonomy is steadily thinning.

Somalia’s Vulnerability and Strategic Stakes

It is here that the Hambantota parallel bites. In Colombo, debts piled up as projects mushroomed, many of them guided by Beijing’s hand, until the arithmetic of repayment became impossible, which was then replaced by the rhetoric of Chinese occupation of Hambantota. In Mogadishu, the first steps are subtle, for now: free training here, discounted technical assistance there, committees and visits and consultancies that cost Somalia little now but will, inevitably, require accommodation later, not in cash, in kind. The slope is gentle, but it inclines towards the same abyss.

Somalia’s vulnerability lies in its hunger for capacity. Emerging from decades of conflict, with a skeletal navy in scale and creaking equipment, any offer of help looks irresistible. But the question is never what is offered today, it is what will be demanded tomorrow. In Hambantota, the pivot was from loans to leases. In Mogadishu, it could be from training to basing rights, from maintenance to exclusive contracts, from committees to concessions. The MoU, innocuous in language, drafted by an army of lawyers from China, may be the opening bid in a long game of positioning.

The stakes are not abstract. Somalia controls a slice of the Indian Ocean through which vital global shipping lanes pass, connecting energy routes from the Gulf to markets in Europe and Asia. Whoever influences Mogadishu influences not just Somali waters but a corridor of international consequence. Already, Turkey has established military training facilities and enjoys considerable leverage. To that equation, Pakistan now seeks to add itself, with China in the background, weaving the threads into a larger tapestry of Indo–Pacific influence.

A Lesson in Diversification

Critics may argue that comparison to Hambantota is alarmist, that Somalia is too fragile for such high–stakes manoeuvring. Yet fragility is precisely what makes it fertile ground. A government eager for support, an economy unable to refuse subsidised training, a navy desperate for equipment, all combine into a scenario where external actors can mould outcomes with relative ease. Hambantota did not begin with a lease; it began with loans dressed as development. Mogadishu may not begin with basing rights, but the slope has already been built.

For Somalia, the lesson is not to shun cooperation, but to diversify it. The more its training, maintenance, and modernisation are monopolised by a single partner, the more leverage that partner accumulates. Balance is the only shield. Duplication of frameworks, as seen with Pakistan’s parallel training initiatives, is not benign competition but a seed of dependency, one that can germinate into geopolitical leverage.

If Hambantota is remembered as a cautionary tale of debt transfigured into dominion, Mogadishu risks becoming its sequel, the story of naval cooperation transmuted into strategic concession. The port in Sri Lanka was surrendered with documents and signatures, but the essence was lost years before, when loans mounted unchecked. Somalia, standing at the threshold, must ask itself whether today’s training modules and vessel maintenance will become forfeited sovereignty tomorrow.

About Author

Commodore Ranjit B Rai (Retd) is the author of the book 'The Indian Navy @75: Reminiscing the Voyage. He is an RNSC-qualified officer who served as Director Naval Intelligence and Director Naval Operations and writes on maritime matters. He also served as the India Representative of Waterman Steam Ships USA and curated the New Delhi Maritime Museum.