Command without consequence: Pakistan’s missing seat at the missile-threat table

The reason traces back to what the Combined Maritime Forces was built to do. CMF's founding doctrine, its information-sharing centres, escorted transit corridors, and boarding protocols were all designed around a specific question: what happens when an armed skiff approaches a merchant vessel off the Somali coast.

New Delhi: Pakistan has commanded Combined Task Force 150, the CMF unit covering the Gulf of Oman and North Arabian Sea, fourteen times since 2002 — more than any other member navy in the coalition’s history. It is, by that measure, one of CMF’s most institutionally active members. That standing has never once translated into a role in the part of the coalition now facing the threat actually killing seafarers in the region.

The reason traces back to what the Combined Maritime Forces was built to do. CMF’s founding doctrine, its information-sharing centres, escorted transit corridors, and boarding protocols were all designed around a specific question: what happens when an armed skiff approaches a merchant vessel off the Somali coast. Two decades of coalition-building answered that question well — piracy incidents in the region fell sharply through the 2010s as a direct result, and Pakistan’s own command record was built almost entirely within that mission........

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