India
extends Malacca Strait reach By
Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The
commissioning of a naval base in the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands will allow India to assert itself
more forcefully in the Malacca Strait, one of the
world's most important waterways and a relatively
weak point in China's geopolitical strategy.
Indian Naval Ship Baaz, which means "hawk"
in Hindi, was inaugurated last week at the Great
Nicobar's Campell Bay as India's southernmost and
easternmost naval air station. The Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, a chain of 572 islands dangled
across the eastern exit of the Bay of Bengal, are
around 650 nautical miles away from Visakhapatnam,
the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command on
the Indian mainland.
The Baaz station, at
the southern end of the chain, allows India to
keep a hawk-like eye on
the strategically important Malacca Strait,
through which 80% of China's crude and oil imports
from the Middle East and Africa must pass, along
with fuel imports for Japan and South Korea.
Since adopting the "Look East" policy in
1990, Delhi has strengthened its diplomatic
engagement and trade with Southeast Asian
countries, and increasingly East Asian countries.
The role of its navy in projecting power far from
its shores is growing, driven in part by Indian
ambitions to be a significant player in the
emerging Asia-Pacific security architecture.
Indian media reports have
drawn attention to the new naval air station's
role in "countering China's moves" and keeping an
"increasingly assertive" China in the Indian Ocean
region under check. Indian analysts warn that
robust Sino-Myanmar naval co-operation could at
some time in the future translate into Chinese
ships securing a more permanent presence in the
Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.
Although it
is not a Malacca Strait littoral, India is
contiguous to the strait. Indira Point - the
southern tip of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands -
is about 90 nautical miles from Indonesia's Banda
Aceh. Baaz will improve India's capacity to
monitor security of waters running into the
Malacca Strait.
INS Baaz falls under the
Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), India's first
integrated air and sea command, set up in October
2001 as part of a national security revamp in the
wake of 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan.
The setting up of Baaz must be seen in the
context of the eastern command and increasingly
the ANC as the focus for India's strategic
planners, whereas in the past the navy's western
command was considered as its sword arm. Hitherto,
Carnic Island was the Navy's forward operating
base in the region. Baaz, 300 nautical miles south
of Carnic Island, will now become the new forward
operating base.
While Baaz significantly
enhances India's strategic reach, the development
of a new naval station is part of an overall
"island development plan" underway in the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands. The islands are already
home to naval bases at Port Blair and Car Nicobar,
and air bases are fully operational at Diglipur,
Port Blair and Carnic. As part of the plan,
runways at Campbell Bay and Shibpur are being
extended and three more operational turnaround
bases for warships are being established in the
archipelago. New airstrips are being constructed
at Kamorta and Little Andaman, while the existing
runways at Port Blair and Car Nicobar are being
upgraded. The Indian Army, too, is moving to add
another battalion to the 108 Mountain Brigade
based there.
At Baaz' inauguration last
week, Navy Chief Admiral Nirmal Verma described it
as being "blessed with a brilliant strategic
location". Indeed, Baaz overlooks the Six Degree
Channel, a strip of water separating India's Great
Nicobar from Indonesia. Much of international
shipping entering or leaving the Malacca Strait
must pass through this channel.
The
Malacca Strait, at 900 kilometers long one of the
world's most important waterways, links the Indian
Ocean with the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean
as well as the economies of East Asia with those
of the Middle-East and Europe. The strait's
centrality to maritime trade is evident from the
fact that 50,000 merchant ships and 40% of the
world's trade sails through it annually.
At its inauguration, the naval chief said
that one of Baaz' primary functions is to provide
information based on airborne maritime
surveillance. "Maritime domain awareness is the
key to effective and informed decision-making in
the maritime arena. Despite numerous advancements
in the field of information gathering over sea,
airborne surveillance, using aircraft and UAVs
[unarmed aerial vehicles, or drones], remains
invaluable," Verma said.
At present, Baaz
is equipped to operate light to medium-sized
aircraft capable of short-field operations from
its kilometer-long runway. There are plans to
nearly double the runway length.. The air station
will soon start operating heavier military planes
from the Indian Air Force fleet, such as the
just-inducted Hercules C-130J Super Hercules meant
for Special Forces' operations.
Besides
facilitating India's monitoring of maritime and
other vessels in the region, Baaz will guard
against piracy. According to data provided by the
International Maritime Bureau, piracy incidents in
the Malacca Strait dropped from 38 reported
incidents in 2004 to none in 2011. Still, the
waterway's vulnerability to piracy or terrorist
attack remains high.
Baaz will also
enhance India's capacity to monitor its 600,000 sq
km of exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Andaman
and Nicobar region. The EEZ here is roughly 30% of
the country's total EEZ and rich in resources.
In April this year, India commissioned INS
Dweeprakshak ("defender of islands" in Sanskrit),
a new naval base at Kavaratti in the Lakshadweep
Islands in the Arabian Sea. Dweeprakshak and Baaz
will now act as India's western-most and
eastern-most sentinels situation on its territory.
Given the deep wariness of the Malacca
Strait littoral nations to outside powers becoming
involved in providing security in the strait,
India has been careful to avoid stepping on their
toes. It has preferred a co-operative approach
that doesn't impinge on their sovereignty
concerns.
India has also been engaging in
greater maritime cooperation with South East Asian
and East Asian countries, including the Malacca
Strait littorals through the Milan series of naval
exercises, co-operative patrols and other
navy-to-navy linkages with them. The Indian navy
has exercised with the navies of Singapore,
Indonesia and Malaysia since the early 1990s.
Indian naval officials say that in the event of a
crisis in the Malacca Strait, if its littorals
were to request India's help, Baaz will be ready
to become involved.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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