The fifth meeting of the National Security Advisors (NSA) of the ‘Colombo Security Conclave’ (CSC) at the Maldivian capital of Malé will be noted for the induction of Mauritius as a full member, and the continuing observer status of Bangladesh and Seychelles, which in due course are expected to sign in. As it can be visualised, the carefully-crafted toddler steps from its commencement in 2011 has brought the multi-national regional arrangement this far, with a critical name-change from ‘Maritime Security Agreement’ to ‘Maritime and Security Agreement’, at the previous Colombo session in 2020, indicating future possibilities.
Before CSC, given the complexities of regional equations, India as the inevitable centrifugal force in the neighbourhood Indian Ocean Region (IOR) had kept strategic and security relations bilateral. The failure of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to keep out bilateral issues as the Charter promised had made New Delhi especially wary about multilateral arrangements centred on South Asia, but the post-Cold War geopolitical and geostrategic realities have dictated otherwise. This is true of every other member and observer in the Conclave. India did say early on that the nation would be the ‘net-provider of security’ in the region, a commitment that it would have to keep, yes, but a commitment it could and should keep only through a consensus approach, as the CSC now indicates.
Consensus is the key
It had all begun with the India-Maldives bi-annual ‘Dosti’ Coast Guard exercises following the footsteps of India’s ‘Operation Cactus’ military intervention—at invitation—to end the mercenary-led coup-bid against Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in 1988. Unlike what the original purpose might have indicated, the Dosti exercises were about non-traditional security issues like humanitarian aid and ocean pollution. The continuing ethnic war in Sri Lanka delayed the nation’s induction, and the CSC now has expanded the scope beyond non-traditional security; however, carefully keeping conventional security issues and cooperation, like a regional defence cooperation pact, at arm’s length.
The Sri Lankan consensus centred on emerging geostrategic realities and the need for the nation to keep away from Cold War era-like blocs and thus keep extra-regional powers off its waters and beyond.
A real beginning was made—outside India—when ahead of the 2005 presidential polls in Sri Lanka, the competing candidates, namely, incumbent Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, indicated the nation’s common security priorities without mutual consultations. The Sri Lankan consensus centred on emerging geostrategic realities and the need for the nation to keep away from Cold War era-like blocs and thus keep extra-regional powers off its waters and beyond.
As a nation that had commended the Indian Ocean as a ‘zone of peace’ and campaigned for the same in the early decades of the Cold War, the Sri Lankan political position was understandable. Yet, in the prevailing circumstances, Colombo was not unwilling for a ‘defence cooperation agreement’ with the larger Indian neighbour, but again the ethnic war was the undoing till its end in 2009.
Though there were no listeners in the Indian strategic community when the Rajapaksa regime cried hoarse that on security issues, India was their only choice for a partner, there was a change in the official perception in New Delhi, since. Indian concerns were centred on Sri Lanka choosing China for development funding, especially on the southern Hambantota port, which anyway was offered to India by successive governments in Colombo. India had rightly reasoned that it would be an uneconomic project, but that did not dissuade Sri Lanka, for which it became a passion, derived from its history and heritage.
Even otherwise, CSC was not an India-forced decision. If anything, what was a unilateral Sri Lankan consensus evolved into a bilateral consensus involving a common neighbour—the Maldives, on the same line and logic. The intervening Indian involvement in providing rescue and rehabilitation assistance in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Maldives and Sri Lanka, prioritising them over India’s own losses, and withdrawing the Indian troops as fast as they came, created trust in New Delhi and also erased suspicions that it was angling for a permanent military presence/base as some had thought the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) to be.
Indian concerns were centred on Sri Lanka choosing China for development funding, especially on the southern Hambantota port, which anyway was offered to India by successive governments in Colombo.
India has always rushed help to Bangladesh after destructive cyclonic storms that are periodic, and the ‘Himalayan earthquake’ in Nepal that was devastating. However, they were all bilateral arrangements. Against this, there’s lack of clarity if India sharing intelligence inputs with Sri Lanka on the dastardly ‘Easter serial-blasts’ of 2019 was a bilateral enterprise or a CSC initiative, as with the three-nation cooperation in busting large-scale drug trafficking in shared waters.
India’s pond
India’s vision for what can now be justifiably dubbed ‘India’s pond’ began with the External Affairs Ministry (MEA) creating a separate IOR Division, focusing on near-neighbours, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and then adding Mauritius and Seychelles to the list. In 2019, Comoros, Madagascar, and French Réunion Island, forming the ‘mouth’ of the Indian Ocean, along with Mauritius and Seychelles, were included to the portfolio of the IOR division.
No one is now talking about Comoros and Madagascar joining the CSC. Yet, flanked by India’s extended land territories in the Andaman and Lakshadweep Seas on either side, and a friendly US Diego Garcia base sitting in the middle (not to leave out the French sovereignty over Réunion), a security net is taking shape to protect the ‘pond’ than admirers and adversaries may have thought of. However, such a vision has its limitations, as involving extra-territorial powers has the potential to hamper the very idea of the CSC.
Member nations, starting with India, the largest one in the grouping, are well aware of the limitations and also the possibility of a total collapse if any or many of them went outside the scope of the fixed agenda.
Yet, unlike the US-led Quad, better still AUKUS, the CSC will remain a regional initiative for regional good, with limited scope and goals, as is to be defined by the commonly-agreed Charter and roadmap. If an expansion of either the membership or the agenda is required, it would be achieved only through the consensus process involving sovereign nations. Member nations, starting with India, the largest one in the grouping, are well aware of the limitations and also the possibility of a total collapse if any or many of them went outside the scope of the fixed agenda.
Resource shortage
Apart from shared concerns in an ever-changing post-Cold War geostrategic scenario, smaller nations, both in the IOR and elsewhere find themselves helpless and hapless in addressing the demands on their resources. A case in point is that of Maldives. Other nations are not far off in terms of inadequacy in meeting the demands of 21st century security paradigm.
As Maldivian Defence Minister Mariya Didi, as the host, said in her opening remarks at the Malé session, on 9 March 2022, “Ocean forms 97.5 percent of the nation’s territory”. Though the Defence Minister did not mention it, the country lacks not only financial resources but even human resources to secure such a vast area of open seas, which are also open to the skies. According to a recent official figure, birth rates are falling in the densely-populated capital city of Malé, which accounts for 40 percent of the nation’s 450,000 population. External assistance thus becomes inevitable.
It is here that the involvement of the Indian neighbour with a huge stake in the security of the region as a whole is being misinterpreted by the political opposition identified with former President Abdulla Yameen, who has launched an ‘India Out’ campaign, with particular reference to the Indian military presence. The likes of minister Mariya Didi and her government have flatly denied the campaign points, which are mostly unsubstantiated. Similar anti-India sentiments used to be flagged in nations like Bangladesh, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 74, does not have a popular heir-apparent or even adversary, making ‘leadership vacuum’ a real possibility in the future.
Yet, there is a need for India as the unnamed leader of the grouping to keep an open mind lest the CSC experiment should fail on a future day just as the three-nation NSA meetings got stalled through much of Yameen’s Presidency of Maldives (2013-18). This is going to be the most testing and the trickiest part of the CSC arrangement, and overcoming such seasonal domestic changes through bilateral and institutional mechanisms (alone) would determine the longevity and success of the current scheme, for it to look at the future with confidence and continuity and graded goals beyond the present one, to secure the shared waters without involving ‘extra-regional’ powers.
This article was first published on ORF.
N Sathiya Moorthy is a Distinguished Fellow and Head of ORF’s Chennai Initiative. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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