Tag: indian ocean

China/India Cold War warming up in the Maldives: Reuters

On the pristine equatorial shores of the Maldives, an archipelago best known for luxurious resort hideaways swathed in coral reefs and cerulean seas, India and China’s regional cold war is warming up, writes Bryson Hull for Reuters.

“Stretched across 90,000 sq km (35,000 sq m) of the Indian Ocean southwest of India, the Sunni Muslim nation of 1,192 islands finds itself sandwiched between the two Asian rivals, and both flexed their muscles at a meeting of South Asian nations hosted by the Maldives last week.

China preceded the heads-of-state meeting of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) by opening its first embassy in the Maldives, a ceremony attended by Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun.

Two Maldivian officials said China had hurriedly rented a space to open the embassy in time for the summit, while the actual embassy is being built. Officials with the Chinese delegation declined repeated requests by Reuters for comment.

“The bureaucrat in me says the timing is right. You want to open something like that when there is a big official around. But opening it right before SAARC is a way to tweak India,” an Asian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

India’s response to China’s diplomatic display included a show of military force and political largesse.

Navy frigates patrolled off the Gan atoll, where the summit was held, to protect VIP visitors including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a one-day state visit to the capital island, Male.

“This is our extended neighborhood. We wish to work with the Maldives and other like-minded countries to ensure peace and prosperity in the Indian Ocean region,” Singh told the Maldivian parliament.

India extended a $100 million credit line, inked pacts on maritime and counterterrorism cooperation, and both nations agreed “their respective territories would not be allowed for any activity inimical to the other and by any quarter.”

New Delhi has long been concerned by any moves China makes to boost its presence in neighboring countries, and is worried about the so-called “string of pearls” ambition to expand Chinese maritime influence in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

China made its present felt throughout the SAARC summit. The post-summit giveaway bag included porcelain pens and diaries from the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry detailing “Five Years of China-SAARC Cooperation.” A box for a new 40-inch TV in the media center bore a sticker: “China Aid.”

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Comment: US needs to strengthen ties with South Asia

Last week, the United States and India concluded the fourth strategic dialogue on Asia-Pacific regional affairs, illustrating the importance that Washington places on its relationship with New Delhi. India’s surging economy has deepened interest among US policymakers eager to advance bilateral ties with a large country in the region that shares a democratic identity. Factors contributing to this shift include China’s ascent as an economic and strategic power and the possibility that the US military may favor an offshore strategy in the future.

However, India should not be the sole hope on which US security strategy rests in South Asia. US relations with this new strategic partner are guaranteed to experience bumps, as evidenced by the recent rejection of US firms in the Indian Air Force’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition. Moreover, India has long maintained a strong non-aligned foreign policy tradition, enforced by policymakers who face continual domestic political pressures not to appear too pro-American. This is not to say that the US-India strategic partnership appears ready to fail. Still, one possible scenario could find relations with India not progressing as quickly as desired, while relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan remain in tatters, leaving minimal US relations with other South Asian states. Even if this scenario does not occur, the United States cannot afford to ignore the need to forge deeper strategic relationships with the smaller countries in the region.

Relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal hold many unexplored possibilities and reasons for expansion.

First, as Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake pointed out in Congressional testimony earlier this year, all these countries are governed by democratically elected leaders. As with the “shared values” discourse supporting greater relations with democratic India, the United States has a similar foundation for fostering ties with these nations.

Second, three of these countries are maritime states. Given the importance of securing Indian Ocean sea lanes, through which 50 percent of the world’s container traffic and 70 percent of the world’s crude and oil products transit, it is in US interests to promote maritime security cooperation among South Asian countries and deepen defense ties with these navies as a form of burden-sharing in the Indian Ocean.

Further, smaller countries provide better test cases for realizing new strategic visions and more permissive environments in which to experiment than do the larger states of India and Pakistan, where constraints are omnipresent and the stakes are much higher. In the Harvard International Review, Doug Lieb has discussed the importance of analyzing international relations in “marginal states” that are often overlooked in a structural realist worldview that privileges the study of large countries. The smaller countries of South Asia could be easy wins for the United States, especially in the face of increasing Chinese dealings there.

US ties are probably the strongest with Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority and democratic nation. Given the country’s vulnerability to nontraditional security threats such as cyclones and earthquakes, the Bangladeshi military would appreciate increased help with weather forecasting technologies and cooperation on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief issues. Before the next environmentally related cataclysm occurs, the United States should further develop security relations with Bangladesh.

The Maldives, like Bangladesh, is a relatively pro-American Muslim democracy. It faces the challenge of countering Somali pirates and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists from Pakistan seeking harbor on any one of its 26 atolls. The Maldives National Defense Forces would likely not be equipped to handle a potential Mumbai-style attack on its tourism industry and could benefit from US counter-terrorism assistance.

US relations with Sri Lanka have been strained due to charges of human rights violations during its defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. Yet as Sri Lanka’s economic and diplomatic ties with China grow, the United States must try not to alienate Sri Lanka given its strategic location in the Indian Ocean. In fact, the US Navy could benefit from exchanges with the Sri Lankan military. For example, learning the swarm attack tactics that were employed during the country’s civil war could help the United States prepare for the threat it may face from Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, the Sri Lankan navy could benefit from US assistance in transitioning its patrols from the north to the south, where roughly 300 ships pass the tip of the island daily.

Regarding Nepal as it draws down its forces and integrates Maoist rebels into the military as part of its peace process, US security cooperation and expertise could be critical in this operation.

Finally, judicial capacity-building would be another low-cost way to advance US ties with all these countries.

By comparison, China has been strengthening its ties to South Asian countries, especially in the form of infrastructure development. Chinese port construction in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Hambantota, Sri Lanka; Gwadar, Pakistan; and Kyaukpyu, Burma have all been cited as prominent examples of a supposed “string of pearls” that China may be seeking to build in an area outside its traditional sphere of influence. Regardless of actual Chinese intentions in South Asia, Indian analysts have voiced concern about being “encircled” by China’s economic, military, and diplomatic inroads with these countries, including Nepal.

In recognition of the growing challenges South Asia presents to the United States, experts are beginning to discuss ways of reorganizing the US government’s bureaucracy to address the region’s new realities. Bruce Riedel and Stephen Cohen have proposed the creation of a “South Asia Command” (SACOM) to overcome the seam issues posed by Pacific Command (PACOM) and Central Command (CENTCOM) separating India and Pakistan in US defense policy. Others have suggested an Indian Ocean Region Command (IORCOM). With such talk and broader discussions about a realignment of US force posture in Asia, now is the time to also examine relations with the smaller countries in South Asia and the prospects for building partner capacities in the region.

As the United States winds down its commitment in Afghanistan, while confronting unbounded uncertainty in its relationship with Pakistan, it can look to the promise of partnership with India only to a certain extent. If disappointments such as the MMRCA rejection happen too often, or if India tests nuclear weapons again and Washington re-imposes sanctions, the United States would be left without strong security partners in the region. For too long, the United States has ignored the potential benefits of fostering relations with the smaller countries in South Asia. Prospects for advancing US security ties with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal deserve serious examination.

Nilanthi Samaranayake is an analyst in the Strategic Studies division at the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Gan hosts international storm research team

The Maldives will host the first in-depth study of equatorial tropical storms between the Maldives and Papua New Guinea, conducted by two dozen research organisations from 16 countries and based on Gan in Addu Atoll.

The team will use airplanes, ships, radars, and approximately 1,500 weather balloons to study the birth, life and death of tropical storms along the equator, particularly the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). These storms affect weather world wide.

Maldives Meteorology Services (MMS) are local sponsors of the project, which was designed by the US Energy Department’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) climate research facility. MMS is providing local weather knowledge, meeting and operations space, and facilities; researchers in turn will offer training on radar and other instrumentation to local meteorologists.

According to the ARM facility, MJO dominates “tropical intraseasonal variability” but few climate models are able to predicts its effects. “AMIE-Gan will measure the area where the MJO begins its eastward propagation, observing the atmosphere, ocean, and air-sea interface,” the facility states.

The MJO affects regional weather patterns such as the Asian and Australian monsoons. Initiating every 30 to 90 days, it can also contribute to hurricane activity in the northeast Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, as well as trigger torrential rainfall along North America’s west coast.

MJO can also affect the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino, which disturbs rain patterns.

MMS Deputy Director General Ali Sharif said the Maldives was strategically chosen.

“The Maldives was selected because the team is looking for the weather phenomenon Madden-Julian Oscillation. The team chose Addu because it is the closest location to the equator in the Maldives.”

The project’s main observation sites will be based in the Maldives, Diego Garcia, the maritime continent, and Manu Island. The Maldives’ Super Site with a majority of radar equipment will be at Gan, and research ships and aircraft will operate in the Indian Ocean as well.

Radar and other equipment have been set up along an 8 kilometre path in the atoll. A meteorological array will use seven different frequencies to scan clouds and precipitation from the Super Site at Gan.

Results gathered at Gan under the AMIE-Gan project will complement results gathered at Manus under the AMIE-Manus project to “allow studies of the initiation, propagation, and evolution of convective clouds within the framework of the MJO,” ARM states.

Sharif said the project could add valuable knowledge to regional climate change.

“It is becoming more important  to understand how oceans regulate the earth’s temperature.” Sharif added that the Maldives temperatures have seen a minor “rising trend.”

The AMIE project is operating under the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a facility of the U. S. Department of Energy. AMIE team leader Chuck Long said conditions in the Indian Ocean remain relatively mysterious.

“The MJO fires up primarily in the Indian Ocean during winter in the northern hemisphere, covering an area several thousand kilometers across. It moves eastward and when it hits the maritime continent — all those islands in Southeast Asia, it weakens. Why?” asked Long. “And why does it initiate in the Indian, not in the equatorial Atlantic or Pacific? What is so special about the conditions in the Indian Ocean? These are some of the questions we must answer to understand the MJO and represent it in forecast and climate models.”

AMIE will be working with two other research collaborations during this Indian Ocean campaign, Dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) and Cooperative Indian Ocean Experiment on Intraseasonal Variability in the Year 2011 (CINDY). DYNAMO’s team is being led by the University of Miami. CINDY is an overarching international effort and is being led by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

Research staff and/or facilities have been contributed by Australia, China, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Maldives, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. US scientists, students, engineers, and staff from 16 universities and 11 national laboratories and centers are participating in the field campaign.

The investigation experiment (AMIE) is scheduled to start in October and run through March 2012. Opening ceremonies on October 8 will celebrate the international cooperation behind the project, which PNNL said will lead to a better understanding of Earth’s climate.

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Uncertainty remains over scale of Maldives piracy threat

With two separate attacks this month by Somalian pirates within a 30 nautical miles of Trivandrum, India, one maritime expert has warned that the Maldives’ growing use as crossroads for shipping routes make its own waters and businesses an increasingly attractive target in the future.

Tim Hart, a security analyst specialising in piracy from around the Horn of Africa for Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants (MUSC), told Minivan News that the two attacks reported this month off India’s southern coast raised wider security issues for the Maldives that have previously affected other nearby archipelago nations like the Seychelles.

While the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) this week said that the country’s territorial waters had not come under direct attack from piracy originating from Somalia, a spokesman said it shared the UN’s concerns over possible threats in the Indian Ocean.

Tourism angle

Increasing numbers of refugees from Somalia are flooding into northern destinations such as Kenya and Yemen, and with limited opportunities for those remaining, Hart said piracy was at believed to be the country’s second largest source of revenue.

In this lucrative market place for piracy, the UN has expressed concerns that the Indian Ocean is becoming in key battleground in trying to stem maritime attacks as suspects move increasingly further from Somali shores.

Hart said that as cargo fleets moved closer to the Maldives to try and ensure safer shipping routes, pirates were likely to follow in the search of viable targets.

Aside from the potential impact to the country’s own shipping enterprises, the maritime expert added that tourism had also been affected by piracy in other Indian Ocean nations.

“The Maldives is a large group of islands that can make monitoring difficult like in the Seychelles,” he said. “The [Seychelles] back in 2009 had a pirate issue that seriously affected its tourism. This has also been seen around the coast of Kenya in areas like Mombasa, where cruise ships were coming under attack in some cases.”

According to Hart, although cruise ship attacks are relatively isolated occurrences, the UK parliament has recently raised issues over an incident in Kenya that directly targeted tourists on board a vessel – an event that significantly affected cruise interest in the region.

“With the Maldives’ territories made up largely of ocean, (the country is 99 per cent water) the concern is that pirates might become influenced to make similar attacks there,” he added.

Targeting isolated resorts would be outside the traditional modus operandi of Somali pirates, Hart said, explaining that they only attacked targets other than merchant vessels out of opportunity.

“It really depends on how desperate a particular group of pirates becomes, generally larger merchant vessels offer the largest incentives for ransom,” he said. “To set foot onto an island, highjack and kidnap tourists and then try to get back to Somalia using their vessels would be very difficult.”

Despite the challenges posed by such an attack, Hart said that it had not been unheard of for pirates to mount land-based assaults in areas like the Niger Delta.

“Pirates are known to be very adaptive in terms of their methods and targets,” he said. “Wherever someone has tried to prevent them from operating, they have changed their target areas and tactics.”

However, Maldivian tourism officials and insiders have identified piracy as a potential security concern for the resort industry.

Adapting to piracy challenges

Hart claimed that the Maldives could take some lessons from the Seychelles in terms of further tightening maritime security against potential acts of piracy, he added that adopting a fix-all approach to the problem was impractical.

“With regards to piracy, it is difficult to set out a one-stop shop in terms of reducing risks, though I would suggest looking at how the Seychelles has operated in 2009 and 2010. Because of recent monsoon weather [in the Indian Ocean region], defining attack areas and establishing operational islands is very difficult,” he claimed. “However, anything to support additional maritime surveillance to protect islands and [local] waters would be encouraged.”

In terms of a national strategy for piracy prevention, MNDF Major Abdul Raheem said earlier this week that the Maldives is already collaborating with international naval forces – under wider UN military programmes – to patrol and monitor its territorial waters from pirate threats.

Raheem said that despite the serious concerns raised over potential piracy attacks in the Maldives, the MNDF would continue with existing initiatives to try and protect its waters in collaboration with naval forces from other nations like India, Turkey and the US. These nations have taken part in patrols across the country in the last few years.

“Piracy is seen as a major problem in the Maldives and we are very concerned about possible attacks occurring in our waters,” he said at the time. “However, we have not recognised piracy threats flaring up [around the Maldives]. With help from other nations, particularly India, we are continuing patrols.”

Raheem stressed that some Somali vessels had drifted into the country’s waters – often with engine troubles – though it was not clear if they were potential pirate threats or refugees trying to escape the country. Hart claimed that the dilemma over confirming legitimate pirate suspects was a major difficulty in policing international waters against attacks.

“The difference between a pirate and a refugee is often a crew that have thrown their weapons overboard. You have to catch pirates in the act, otherwise it can be impossible to try and stop them.”

From his experiences of studying emerging pirate threats off the Horn of Africa, Hart said it was increasingly common – even in the Indian Ocean – for Somali vessels to wish up on local coasts with no traces of weapons on them, then claiming that they are fishermen lost at sea.

“In certain cases, as opposed to dumping weapons at the threat of being spotted by naval vessels, some pirates will use reconnaissance and GPS systems and have weapons stored securely nearby in order to prepare for possible attacks on vulnerable targets.”

Hart said the situation was further complicated by the tens of thousands of Somalian refugees trying to escape the country that is wrought with political and social instability.

Just this week, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reported significant increases in the number of refugees from the country, with 20,000 nationals estimated to have attempted the arduous journey to escape to a Kenyan refugee camp in the last fortnight alone.

According to the report, the Dadaab refugee camp built initially for 90,000 people is now home to 360,000 displaced residents. The AFP report suggested that 1.46 million people are thought to have been displaced in Somalia.

Hart said that the domestic difficulties within Somalia, along with its geographic location, had made piracy a lucrative revenue source amidst the country’s many socio-political uncertainties.

“Piracy is a symptom of the problems being seen on the land. A lot of people have been trying to escape the civil war in the country’s south and have been trying to move north to areas like Yemen and Kenya,” he said. “Pirates have also used the very strategic [maritime] location that the Horn of Africa offers and exploited it.”

Amidst the difficulties of trying to find domestic solutions within Somalia as a means of confronting piracy, the UN Security Council has continued to discuss the formation of international courts and prisons to try and bring convicted pirates to justice.

However, Hart said that the effectiveness of these prisons as a potential deterrent to Somali nationals turning to piracy was uncertain.

“At present in Somalia, piracy is the country’s second largest industry. There are already huge risks, but you go out to sea and potentially have huge gains to make,” he claimed. “One possible deterrent would be being arrested and being held in prison. However, even these prisons are likely to be a better environment than life for many in places like Mogadishu – the Somali capital.”

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UK to help fund maritime surveillance of pirates in Indian Ocean

The UK will contribute £6 million to maritime surveillance in the Indian Ocean in a bid to contain the spread of pirates in the Indian Ocean, as part of a £5.3 million counter piracy programme conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The money will also be used to increase prison capacity in Somalia and across the Indian ocean. £600,000 will also be provided to fund enhanced optical imagery equipment for the Seychelles Coastguard to allow surveillance aircraft to take high image quality video and photographs.

“This will aid the capture of the pirates and provide valuable evidence in court cases. The fuel tanks of the aircraft will also be upgraded to enable them to fly longer distances,” the UK High Commission to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said in a statement.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, said that there are currently around 820 Somali pirates “either serving sentences or awaiting trial around the world. I am pleased that the UK’s new support to counter piracy efforts in the Indian Ocean will aid the location, capture and detention of pirates across the region.”

Increased counter-piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden has led to pirates spreading outwards into the Indian Ocean. Several boatloads of lost and malnourished pirates were rescued by islanders in the Maldives last year, presenting the government with a major international legal headache.

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Sea Levels Rising during Maldives ‘Winter Season’: Prof. Weiqing Han

Winter season data shows a “significant sea level rise’ for Maldives, according to Professor Weiqing Han, leading author of a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder USA.

The study combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations. It’s findings suggest that climate warming is amplifying regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands.

Other areas, such as the Seychelles, are experiencing lower sea levels.

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Indian Ocean’s internal waves photographed

An image showing internal and surface waves on the Indian Ocean near the Andaman islands has been published by NASA’s Earth Observatory website.

“When tides drag the ocean over a shallow barrier such as a ridge on the ocean floor, it creates waves in the lower, denser layer of water,” Earth Observatory explains. “These waves, internal waves, can be tens of kilometers long and can last several hours.”

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Maldives studying the extension of its continental shelf

The Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) is working on the possibility of extending the Maldives’ continental shelf, reports Miadhu.

Major Mohamed Ibrahim said the Maldives had to make its submission to the UN Commission on Continental Shelf on the findings of its studies by 7 September 2010.

He said a study had already been prepared with assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Major Ibrahim said the technical team had studied the Indian Ocean and the Maldives since the 1970s.

He also noted the difficulty of finding experts to conduct the studies.

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