BANGALORE - India's new listening post in
Madagascar has reportedly begun operations. Under
construction for more than a year, the monitoring
station will provide India with electronic eyes
and ears in the southwestern Indian Ocean.
Located in northern Madagascar, the
monitoring station "was quietly made operational"
in early July, according to a report in The Indian
Express. It will be linked with similar facilities
in Kochi
and
Mumbai "to gather intelligence on foreign navies
operating in the region", the report said. Mumbai
and Kochi, which are on India's west coast, are
headquarters of the Indian Navy's Western and
Southern Commands, respectively.
Madagascar, a large island off Africa's
east coast, is among a growing number of Africa's
Indian Ocean shores with which India is building
naval and other ties. The Indian Navy took charge
of Mozambique's sea security during the African
Union summit there in 2003 and during the World
Economic Forum summit the following year.
To Madagascar's east lies Mauritius. In
1974, India laid the foundation of its naval
security cooperation with Mauritius with the gift
of the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Amar. India later
provided Mauritius with an interceptor patrol
boat, INS Observer, in 2001 and a Dornier Do 228
maritime surveillance aircraft in 2004. The Indian
Navy has patrolled waters off Mauritius a few
times.
Media reports last year spoke of a
possible larger profile for India in Mauritius.
According to reports, Mauritius offered its
Agalega Islands to India on a long-term lease
ostensibly for development as tourist
destinations. The Agalega Islands are 1,100
kilometers from Mauritius, 3,000km from India and
1,800km from the US base at Diego Garcia.
Both India and Mauritius quickly denied
the lease report - the leasing of a predominantly
Creole island to India would be a touchy issue in
a country with a delicate ethnic balance between
the francophone Creoles and the Indo-Mauritians.
However, according to the Indian Express report,
"India is looking at developing another monitoring
facility at an atoll it has leased from Mauritius
[Agalega] in the near future." The report said
that while the government is silent on the issue,
"sources say some forward movement has recently
been made on the project".
Across the
channel to Madagascar's west lies Mozambique. Last
year, India signed a memorandum of understanding
with Mozambique that envisaged maritime patrolling
of the waters off the latter's coast, supplying
military equipment, training personnel, and
transferring technical know-how in assembling and
repairing military vehicles, aircraft and ships.
India's long-standing ties with Seychelles
were further strengthened in 2005 when Delhi gave
the latter's coast guard a fast-attack vessel, INS
Tarmugli. India has given a few helicopters to
Seychelles over the years and Indian naval ships
routinely visit the archipelago.
India's
naval foray into the southwestern Indian Ocean has
gone by largely unnoticed. In contrast, its naval
presence and activity near the Malacca Strait to
its east and the Gulf of Oman to its west has been
widely reported. The Indian Navy has been
conducting exercises with the Republic of
Singapore Navy for more than a decade, with the
Indonesian Navy since 2004, and with the Royal
Thai Navy since last August. Next month, the
navies of five countries - India, Singapore, the
United States, Japan and Australia - will
participate in a huge naval exercise in the Bay of
Bengal. To its west, India has been holding joint
naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of
Aden and the Arabian Sea with such countries as
Oman, Iran and France.
India's naval
profile in the southwestern Indian Ocean is
smaller but growing quietly. Naval exercises with
South Africa - the only medium naval power in
Africa - and Brazil are expected to take place
next year.
Indian Navy officers say that
India's gifts of patrol boats and other equipment
to countries in its immediate and distant
neighborhood are to "help them identify and
isolate more effectively fast-moving surface craft
that may be carrying terrorists, gun-runners or
smugglers. By providing these countries with
better equipment, India is not only helping them
secure themselves but also hoping that this will
halt the flow of arms, ammunition and contraband
into India."
There is the problem of
piracy, too, in the waters off Africa that has
affected India's trade. To the north of Madagascar
lies Somalia, whose coastline has been identified
by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) as the
area with the highest piracy risk in the world.
According to the latest IMB report, there were 15
reported attacks on vessels in or near Somalia's
waters in the first seven months this year,
compared with 10 incidents during all of last
year. An Indian merchant ship was seized by Somali
pirates this May and held for a month.
For
India, monitoring the waters off Africa's east
coast is an essential part of its effort to secure
sea lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean.
Most of India's trade is by sea - nearly 89% of
India's oil imports arrive by sea. These sea lanes
are thus lifelines for the Indian economy and any
disruption can have disastrous consequences for
its economic and energy security.
India
has been acting to secure sea lanes in the Indian
Ocean, and the monitoring station in Madagascar is
part of this larger naval and maritime strategy.
India is reaching out far into the Indian
Ocean, way beyond its shores, as it sees this
ocean as its domain. In an article published last
year in the Naval War College Review, Donald L
Berlin, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for
Security Studies in Honolulu and an expert on
Indian Ocean strategic issues, wrote:
New Delhi regards the Indian Ocean
as its back yard and deems it both natural and
desirable that India function as, eventually,
the leader and the predominant influence in this
region - the world's only region and ocean named
after a single state. This is what the United
States set out to do in North America and the
Western Hemisphere at an early stage in
America's "rise to power". American foreign
policy throughout the 19th century had one
overarching goal: achieving hegemony in the
Western Hemisphere.
Similarly, in the
expansive view of many Indians, India's security
perimeter should extend from the Strait of
Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz and from the
coast of Africa to the western shores of
Australia. For some Indians, the emphasis is on
the northern Indian Ocean, but for others the
realm includes even the "Indian Ocean" coast of
Antarctica.
Of major concern to India
is China's steady influence in the Indian Ocean
through its naval and other ties with India's
neighbors, including Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka and Pakistan. China has a major role in the
Gwadar port in Pakistan at the mouth of the
strategic Persian Gulf, about 400km from the
Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil
supplies.
Concern mounted in India in
January when Chinese President Hu Jintao rounded
off his eight-nation trip to Africa with a stop at
Seychelles. It was to preempt a Chinese offer of
naval assistance to Seychelles that India quickly
gave INS Tarmugli to the Seychelles Coast Guard.
Hu's visit - the first by a Chinese president to
an island state in the southwestern Indian Ocean -
underscored the looming challenge that China poses
to India's influence in this region.
Raja
Mohan, an Indian strategic-affairs expert, pointed
out: "No one doubts India's desire to retain its
foothold in these geopolitically crucial island
states. But question marks remain on whether India
has a strategy to cope [with] China's dramatic
entry into the western Indian Ocean."
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
