The multinational AMAN-2019 naval exercise held in Pakistan’s business and port city of Karachi has just ended. All participants of the biennial event organized by the Pakistan Navy have returned to their respective countries.

The five-day event involved participants from 45 nations: Eleven of them were actively involved in the joint naval exercise, while the rest came as observers. Despite its international scale, the AMAN exercise is apparently still lacking the global exposure of other multinational naval exercises, such as the United States-administered Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), or the large variety of maritime exercises held by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Similar to them, the AMAN exercises have also been inviting the big naval nations, such as the US, the United Kingdom and China, and they have participated. However, the AMAN exercises are newer than the RIMPAC exercises, which have been held since 1971, or the NATO exercises, which have been held since the 1950s.

Although the numbers of warships and weapons systems involved in the recently completed joint AMAN exercises are still unable to match those of RIMPAC or NATO, AMAN being a naval exercise specifically for the Indian Ocean region makes it significant despite its newness and size.

AMAN (which means “peace” in Pakistan’s national language of Urdu) was designed by the Pakistan Navy primarily to increase cooperation, trust and interoperability between the participating navies.

The AMAN exercises were structured to create responses, tactics, techniques and procedures against non-traditional threats through tactical warfare planning. The activities of the joint exercise included antipiracy operations, combined antisubmarine exercises, communications, boarding and air defense. The main purpose of the exercise was to augment professional expertise in joint operations and strategy and achieve a consensus approach for global maritime security — in other words, an ability to act together.

Like previous AMAN exercises, this year’s event had two distinct phases: a Harbor Phase and a Sea Phase. The Harbor Phase included maritime counterterrorism demonstrations by the Pakistan Marines, visits to ships of various navies for participants to better understand each other and an International Maritime Conference held under the aegis of the National Center for Maritime Policy and Research at Bahria University, which was attended by international speakers and delegates from around the world.

Meanwhile, the Sea Phase provided the opportunity for the participating nations to focus on their interoperability and attain a mutual understanding of their capabilities, as well as of each other’s skill levels, through a wide range of activities like search and rescue operations, gunnery drills, antipiracy operational demonstrations, replenishment at sea, antisurface and antisubmarine warfare and interdiction exercises. Meanwhile, special operations forces, explosives ordinance disposal teams and different marine units displayed and familiarized themselves with the weapons and equipment of all the participating nations.

Also part of the Sea Phase activities were professional discussions, mine disposal workshops, scenario-based exercises, maritime counterterrorism operations, combat marksmanship training and boarding rehearsals, all of which had been designed to develop greater interoperability between participants.

The biennial AMAN has yet to match the significance and professional quality of other such naval exercises, but the Pakistan Navy’s quality as host has led to an increase in the number of participating nations from 28 in the first edition in 2007 to 35 in 2017 and 45 this year.

However, the AMAN exercises have not been able to attract the participation of Pakistan’s neighbor India, despite it being an important nation in the Indian Ocean region.

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