Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Delhi all ears in the Indian Ocean

The Pentagon expects to strengthen military ties with India as a means to contain China.

It has become urgent because the Bush Administration is trying to lure India into an alliance with the United States that would implicitly define China as the enemy. When US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited New Delhi last month, she told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that it was now America's policy to "help India become a major world power in the 21st century", and the State Department briefing note emphasised that the US "understands fully the implications, including the military implications, of that statement".
#msg-6072706

Thus…

U.S., India seal nuclear pact
Bush acknowledges that approval of Congress will be difficult to obtain
Mar. 2, 2006. 08:47 AMhttp://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&a....

This is quite a "rightful domain".

In fact, several Indian analysts view India's security perimeter - its "rightful domain" - as extending from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca from Africa's east coast to the western shores of Australia.

-Am


Delhi all ears in the Indian Ocean
By Sudha Ramachandran

Mar 3, 2006

BANGALORE - India is reportedly planning to set up a high-tech monitoring station in northern Madagascar to tackle piracy and terrorism, while keeping an eye on China and the sea lanes that are so critical to Delhi's economy and security.

The station in Madagascar, a large island in the southern Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, will enable India to keep an eye on growing terrorist activities in East Africa and piracy in the waters off the East African coast. It would be the first such facility New Delhi has opened in another country, though India has a monitoring station in Antarctica that is meant for scientific observation and experimentation.

Al-Qaeda activities in several East African countries have been of concern for several years. Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Comoros - all Indian Ocean littorals - have either experienced terror attacks by suspected al-Qaeda militants or are believed to have activists on their soil. The alleged threat posed by al-Qaeda in the region is said to have prompted the US to set up an anti-terror task force of almost 2,000 members in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to monitor the region.

"India will pay US$2.5 million to lease the station, because it apprehends threats to its strategic naval assets and its political, economic and military interests in Africa," the online Public Affairs Magazine reported. "The monitoring station will have high-tech digital communication systems."

The monitoring station is in tune with Indian maritime doctrine that envisages an ambient forward naval presence from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca.

Madagascar is in a rough neighborhood. To the north is civil-war-racked Somalia, which hasn't had a functioning central government for more than a decade. The waters off Somalia's coast are piracy-infested.

There have been 37 incidents of piracy off Somalia's coast since last March, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a part of the International Chamber of Commerce that fights crime related to maritime trade and transport, particularly piracy and commercial fraud, and protects the crews of ocean-going vessels.

In fact, Somalia is being described as "the most dangerous place these days". Jayant Abayankar of the bureau said, "The Malacca Strait used to be one of the worst, and the waters off Nigeria and Iraq are currently bad. But Somalia is the worst."

For instance, an Indian ship with 35 crew members was hijacked on Sunday by gunmen off the Somali coast. It is incidents such as these that India's station at Madagascar would hope to prevent through monitoring and swift action.

But while monitoring the region for piracy and terrorist activity might be the ostensible reason for an Indian monitoring station in Madagascar, there are other considerations that seem to have prompted the decision.

While the Indian presence at Madagascar is "purportedly for anti-piracy and maritime counter-terrorism monitoring purposes, it is possible that a station is being set up here for monitoring the sea lanes of communication [SLOCs] in the Indian Ocean", suggests Lawrence Prabhakar, visiting fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore and associate professor of political science at the Madras Christian College in India.

The Indian Ocean is a critical waterway for global trade and commerce. Half the world's containerized freight, a third of its bulk cargo and two-thirds of its oil shipments traverse this ocean. It provides major sea routes connecting Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia with Europe and the Americas and is home to several critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca.

The significance of the Indian Ocean to India's economic development and security is immense. Most of India's trade is by sea. Nearly 89% of India's oil imports arrive by sea. The SLOCs are therefore lifelines for the Indian economy and any disruption in these can have disastrous consequences. Securing the SLOCs is therefore a prime objective of India naval and maritime strategy.

The proposed monitoring station on Madagascar is part of a larger Indian strategy to secure SLOCs in the Indian Ocean. It is another step that India is taking to assert its presence and secure SLOCs through policing waters from Madagascar, Mozambique and the Gulf of Oman in the west to the Malacca Strait and probably the South China Sea in the east.

In fact, several Indian analysts view India's security perimeter - its "rightful domain" - as extending from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca from Africa's east coast to the western shores of Australia.

To its east, India's naval presence has witnessed a significant and visible increase. The Indian navy has been exercising with the Singaporean navy for more than a decade, with the Indonesian navy since 2004 and with the Thai navy since August. In 2002, Indian and US ships engaged in joint escort duties in the Malacca Strait. Likewise to its west, the Indian navy has been holding joint exercises in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea with the likes of Oman, Iran and France.

In contrast to its exercises near the Malacca Strait or in the Gulf of Oman, the Indian navy's foray into the southern Indian Ocean is less talked about. However, the proposed monitoring station on Madagascar is not the first time that the Indian navy will play a role in waters off the East African coast. The Indian navy has patrolled the waters around Mauritius at least twice and during the African Union summit in Mozambique in 2002, the Indian navy provided seaward security.

The expansion of the Indian naval presence in the Indian Ocean is as much about keeping an eye on the mounting Chinese presence in these waters as securing the SLOCs. The Chinese presence in the Bay of Bengal has increased much to India's concern after its growing proximity with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

And India is anxious over China's involvement in Pakistan's Gwadar port project. Gwadar is a fishing village just 72 kilometers from the Iranian border on the Arabian Sea coast in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran to the west.

Gwadar is near the mouth of the strategic Persian Gulf, about 400km from the Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil supplies. Total cost of the Gwadar project is estimated at US$1.16 billion, with China committed to about $198 million for the first phase.

"China has access to Egypt's Port Said, Iran's Bandar Abbas port and Pakistan's Gwadar port. Some years ago China had a missile tracking facility in Zanzibar, Tanzania," Prabhakar told Asia Times Online, pointing out that an Indian naval presence on Madagascar was therefore "not a bad idea".

India has naval bases in Cochin on the southwest coast of the Indian peninsula, Karwar near the confluence of the Kali River and the Arabian Sea, and Mumbai, the largest port in western India. When linked with Madagascar "the quadrant would give India an idea of what extra-regional navies are up to in the East African and southern African coast", Prabhakar said.

With a monitoring station on Madagascar, the possibility of the Indian navy venturing into joint patrols with other navies in the region cannot be ruled out. "Cooperative patrol is possible with [the] South African navy, the only medium naval power in the entire African continent. Besides, joint patrols with the US Navy are possible," said Prabhakar, drawing attention to "lower end maritime asymmetric threats in the waters here".

Prabhakar points out that with a monitoring station in Madagascar, "Some limited offshore patrolling by Indian offshore patrol vessels is quite possible. This could mean deployment of a few rotary and fixed-wing maritime patrol craft will follow."

India's move to Madagascar will be welcomed by the Americans, with whom New Delhi is growing closer. In Beijing, however, where India's growing blue-water ambitions have been viewed with some wariness, it would raise eyebrows.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.





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