NEW DELHI - India has quietly undertaken a
charm offensive with Myanmar's ruling junta, just
months after New Delhi had publicly joined hands
with Western governments to chastise the military
regime for cracking down brutally against
protesting monks and pro-democracy agitators in
the old capital of Yangon.
Despite
widespread criticism of its diplomatic and
commercial gambit, India's conciliatory approach
now has the backing of the United Nations, which
is leading so far unsuccessful mediation efforts
between the junta and the pro-democracy opposition
led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the world
watched in horror, saffron-robed monks, dressed in
the
color of sacrifice, marched through the streets
with their begging bowls turned downwards. That
gesture of self-denial and abnegation, on par with
the fasts Mahatma Gandhi often undertook to purify
himself, as well as the enemy, sent a collective
shudder across major world capitals.
The
September protests and the government's crackdown
have now faded from international headlines. And
in the coming days, the Indian government is set
to send a high-level team to meet the top military
establishment in Naypidaw, Myanmar's new secluded
capital city.
Meanwhile, General Maung
Aye, the number two ranking officer in the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC), seems all
set to visit India in April. So what accounts for
Delhi's newfound diplomatic derring-do?
Indian officials confirm that the junta's
decision in early January to allow India to
develop the strategically-located port of Sittwe
in Myanmar's western Arakan province, at a cool
cost of US$120 million, has much to do with the
turnaround.
To India, the Sittwe award
comes at a time when New Delhi has been
particularly rattled by China's so-called "string
of pearls" strategy, that envisages a series of
ports and bases built in friendly countries - such
as Pakistan and Myanmar - to safeguard the
country's energy shipments from the Middle East.
Towards that end, the Chinese in recent
months completed the Gwadar warm water port off
the Balochistan coast in Pakistan. In Myanmar, the
Chinese have leveraged their friendly status with
the ruling generals to variously build radar,
refit and refueling facilities in the Coco
Islands, Hianggyi and Khaukphyu.
As such,
Myanmar's decision to allow New Delhi to develop
Sittwe comes as a huge relief to India's strategic
planners. In a recently revealed twist, New Delhi
compromised with the junta by agreeing to change
the terms of the project from "build, operate and
transfer" to "build, operate and use".
What a world of difference one word can
make. Once India agreed that control of the
facility would remain solely with Myanmar and that
it would only be able to "use" the port it
developed - which includes making the Kaladan
river in Myanmar navigable all the way up to
adjoining the northeastern state of Mizoram, as
well upgrading highways within the remote
territory to connect with the rest of India's
national network.
The deal was even
sweeter for India because it took immediate
pressure off New Delhi to succeed in negotiations
with Bangladesh for transport rights of passage to
India's insurgency-hit northeastern states. New
Delhi's own diplomatic problems with Dhaka have
meant that Bangladesh has consistently refused to
provide India the trade and transit rights it has
sought.
More significantly, perhaps,
India's re-engagement with Myanmar seems to have
been sanctioned by none other than UN special
envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari, and thereby,
presumably, also by UN secretary general Ban
Ki-moon's chief benefactor, the US.
Last
week in New Delhi, Gambari said he hoped that
"India would do more than what it had been doing
so far. [India] should work on Myanmar to make the
diplomatic process more inclusive and dialogue
with the opposition parties more
dialogue-oriented." Adding that he was impressed
with India's "growing influence" on Myanmar,
Gambari said India should use its leverage to
become a trustworthy and effective conduit to both
source information as well as send messages to the
Myanmar government.
Clearly, Gambari was
telling New Delhi that although the Western world
- namely, the US and the European Union - was in
favor of taking a tougher line on Myanmar,
including the imposition of new financial
sanctions, it was also amenable to India taking a
softer approach. It is apparently believed that
India's influence could help to check and balance
Myanmar's key ally China, which last year used its
veto power to bar the UN Security Council from
putting Myanmar's abysmal rights record on its
agenda.
For the time being, India seems to
have taken the bait. It rankled deeply in New
Delhi in August last year when the Myanmar junta
withdrew India's state-owned Gas Authority's
"preferential buyer" status on certain offshore
gas field blocks and declared it would instead
sell them to rival PetroChina.
With China
waiting to grab control of more of Myanmar's
untapped natural gas resources and extend its
sphere of strategic influence into the Bay of
Bengal, India realizes it can hardly afford to
play with a straight bat. And so a new great game,
this time with Myanmar as the lucrative prize, is
unfolding on South Asia's strategic chessboard.
For India, of course, the key question is
how to strike the fine balance between close ties
with Myanmar's military regime, the ever-circling
Chinese, and its own domestic opinion, which
favors a much greater political role for Myanmar's
harassed democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who
is still being held under house arrest.
Few in New Delhi can forget that Suu Kyi
studied at a local college here in the 1950s, when
her mother was Myanmar's, then known as Burma,
ambassador to India. When General Maung Aye
arrives to India in April, a formal signature on
Sittwe is expected and a new chapter in bilateral
relations will have opened. Whether India is able
or willing to leverage those ties into pushing for
democratic change in Myanmar is a wildcard.
By then the UN's Gambari will have
hopefully made a third visit to Myanmar, to press
the regime to implement democratic reforms and
move the country towards national reconciliation.
If the geostrategic map suddenly seems
blurred and hardline Western positions not
necessarily what they are advocating behind closed
doors, then there could be more surprises ahead as
India becomes more engaged in Myanmar's future.
Jyoti Malhotra is a political
analyst based in New Delhi, India.
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