President Muizzu’s Pakistan Visit Tests the Maldives’ Fragile Thaw With India

Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu paid a state visit to Pakistan from October 20 to 22, at the invitation of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. This was the first visit by a Maldivian president to Pakistan in 11 years, with the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations providing both the ceremonial backdrop and a symbolic opportunity to enhance ties. The two sides pledged to raise annual bilateral trade from its presently modest $13.9 million to $200 million within two years. They exchanged 20 memoranda of understanding covering fields from healthcare and agriculture to defense cooperation.

Muizzu also reiterated his call to revive the largely moribund South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which has long been hamstrung by India–Pakistan tensions.

While the visit was primarily an exercise in strengthening bilateral ties, it has also drawn scrutiny over its implications for relations with India. It has also brought to the fore a central tension in Muizzu’s foreign policy: how to manage a delicate rapprochement with India while diversifying bilateral partnerships and seeking greater strategic autonomy from New Delhi.

Most of the controversy centered on three of the memoranda, which concerned security cooperation in defense, maritime security and cybersecurity, unsettling both New Delhi and senior figures in the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which has traditionally prioritized close ties with India.

For instance, MDP chairperson and former President Mohamed Nasheed accused Muizzu of drawing the Maldives into the India-Pakistan rivalry, warning that expanding military ties with Islamabad would provoke security concerns in New Delhi and put the Maldives at risk. Meanwhile, former Defense Minister Mariya Ahmed Didi, also of the MDP, warned in an opinion piece that military training and intelligence-sharing with Pakistan could create “lasting dependencies,” exposing the Maldives to pressure over its diplomatic positions and the use of its facilities in a future India-Pakistan crisis. She also urged the government to publish the agreements, whose detailed terms remain undisclosed.

These concerns should also be viewed against the backdrop of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan. Relations deteriorated sharply after a terrorist attack killed 26 people in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in April 2025. India blamed Pakistan-based militants and placed in abeyance the Indus Waters Treaty, the World Bank-brokered agreement that has governed the six rivers of the Indus basin since 1960, threatening Pakistan’s water security. The crisis escalated into four days of military conflict that May.

Meanwhile, Maldives-India relations remain delicate despite a recent thaw. Muizzu and his People’s National Congress (PNC) came to power in 2023 on an “India Out” campaign against a purportedly growing Indian military presence in the Indian Ocean archipelago, which in reality amounted to fewer than 90 personnel operating aircraft India had gifted for medical evacuations and maritime surveillance. Muizzu has since adopted a more cordial approach towards New Delhi, driven in part by the Maldives’ need for Indian financial support amid its economic troubles. The rapprochement has been reciprocated by New Delhi, which is determined to retain its influence over its strategically situated maritime neighbor.

Against this backdrop, the opposition’s criticism cannot be fully separated from the political motivation of targeting Muizzu where he is vulnerable, as he seeks to maintain renewed ties with New Delhi without drawing attention to his earlier anti-India rhetoric and inviting charges of hypocrisy.

Didi, for instance, questioned Muizzu’s silence during a joint press appearance at which Sharif said he had briefed him on Pakistan’s positions on Kashmir and the Indus Waters Treaty, warning that Pakistan would regard any action contrary to the treaty as “a direct act of war.” Didi cautioned that such silence could carry diplomatic implications. Yet it is unclear what Muizzu could reasonably have said. His silence is more plausibly read as an effort to avoid taking sides in the India–Pakistan dispute while preserving his government’s rapprochement with New Delhi, rather than as an endorsement of his host’s position.

The opposition’s political calculations in making these criticisms aside, the visit carries genuine geopolitical implications, particularly when viewed as part of a broader pattern that New Delhi is unlikely to welcome. While Muizzu has come to recognize that the Maldives cannot afford hostile relations with its largest and most powerful neighbor, his administration has also sought to reduce its dependence on India through two complementary strategies.

The first involves increasing the Maldives’ own defense expenditure and enhancing domestic military capabilities. To that end, the government has increased defense spending from roughly $114 million in 2023 to a budgeted $186 million in 2026.

The second strategy centers on diversifying the Maldives’ defense partnerships, a prospect of greater concern to India. Periodic diplomatic tensions notwithstanding, New Delhi has traditionally met much of the Maldives’ military training needs, giving it considerable influence through longstanding defense ties.

Muizzu, however, has made concerted efforts to broaden the Maldives’ defense partnerships, pursuing closer cooperation with several countries, including China, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Türkiye, from which his administration purchased military drones for maritime surveillance. His latest agreements with Pakistan mark a further step in this diversification, with potentially more significant implications for relations with India.

Of the defense-related memoranda, the maritime security agreement is likely to arouse particular suspicion in New Delhi, given the prospect of a more sustained Pakistani naval presence in the Maldives. Pakistani warships called at Malé in March and November 2025, conducting joint exercises with the Maldivian Coast Guard, and the agreement could pave the way for more frequent port calls and naval exercises.

Although its precise terms remain undisclosed, the agreement could thus expand Pakistan’s military footprint in an archipelago whose northernmost islands lie just 130 kilometers from India’s Lakshadweep islands.

The implications of these developments have not been lost on New Delhi, which has been following them closely. On October 23, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it would keep a “close watch” on the agreements and take “whatever appropriate steps may be necessary” to safeguard its security, a warning that was hardly subtle in suggesting Muizzu should tread carefully before deepening defense ties with Pakistan.

Thus far, New Delhi has exercised considerable patience with the Muizzu administration, appearing to treat much of the anti-India rhetoric that brought him to power as a product of domestic political calculations rather than a permanent shift in Maldivian foreign policy.

Even amid these tensions, India continued to engage constructively with the Maldives, providing frequent financial assistance and even accommodating the “India Out” campaign’s central demand by replacing Indian military personnel operating surveillance and rescue aircraft with civilians back in May 2024.

New Delhi has since stepped up its engagement with Malé, particularly following the rapprochement that gathered momentum during Muizzu’s visit to India in October 2024, despite his continued efforts to diversify the Maldives’ defense partnerships, including with countries New Delhi regards with suspicion, such as Türkiye and especially China.

Nevertheless, if Muizzu is seen as disregarding India’s security concerns altogether, that patience may eventually run out.