New Delhi: Even as Indian and Sri Lankan coast guard ships reached the Maldives on Thursday to take part in the trilateral coast guard exercise Dosti 16, a Chinese vessel was seen moored close to the port of Male in the morning raising questions about the security of the exercise.
The Chinese vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3 entered the territorial waters of the Maldives earlier this month ostensibly for what Beijing claimed will do research work. However, after India raised security concerns about this, the Maldives Foreign Ministry stated that the ship will not be allowed to do research work and would dock only for rotation of personnel and replenishments.
India had red-flagged both the Maldives and Sri Lanka in December last year about the entry of the vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3 into the waters of the south Indian Ocean. While Sri Lanka took into consideration India’s concerns and put a one-year moratorium on the entry of all foreign research vessels, the Maldives has gone ahead and permitted the vessel to enter its waters. This decision came despite pressure from the Indian government and concerns raised by various quarters about the vessel being a “spy vessel”. The vessel was earlier scheduled to start conducting “deep water exploration” in Sri Lankan waters at the beginning of this month.
It is worth mentioning here that India has strongly been protesting the repeated visits by Chinese vessels to the waters of the south Indian Ocean, a region New Delhi considers to be under its sphere of influence, ostensibly for research purposes.
However, the continued presence in the area of the Xiang Yang Hong 3, a vessel that was supposed to be visiting the Maldives only for the purposes of rotation of personnel and replenishments even as exercise Dosti 16 is starting is raising questions about maritime security in the region.
“There is nothing unusual about India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives conducting an exercise together,” Anand Kumar, Associate Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses and author of the book Multi-party Democracy in the Maldives and the Emerging Security Environment in the Indian Ocean Region, told ETV Bharat. “But the coming of a Chinese ship close to the area where the exercise is being conducted does create problems.”
He said that the Chinese ship might be loaded with espionage equipment. “Dosti is a regular exercise,” Kumar said. “But the decision to allow a ship from another country to project its power in in the region is problematic for us.”
Exercise Dosti was first conducted in 1991 between the Indian and Maldives Coast Guards. Sri Lanka joined the exercise for the first time in 2012. The exercises have focused on exercises and drills on providing assistance in sea accidents, eliminating sea pollution, and the coast guard’s procedure and conduct during situations such as oil spills.
The aim of the exercise is to further fortify the friendship, enhance mutual operational capability, and exercise interoperability and to build cooperation between the Coast Guards of India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The biennial exercise Dosti was last conducted in 2021. Dosti 16 is being conducted from February 22 to 25.
“MNDF welcomes participating ships from India and Sri Lanka for the Trilateral Joint Exercise ‘DOSTI-16’ from Feb 22-25, the Maldives National Defence Force posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Coast Guards of Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka, along with observers from Bangladesh, join in this biennial event to enhance collaboration between the forces.”
However, this year’s exercise is drawing the interest of observers because it is being conducted at a time when there is a chill in the diplomatic relations between India and China. Ties between India and the Maldives have been on the downswing ever since pro-China Mohamed Muizzu assumed office as President in November last year. Muizzu had won the presidential election on a pronounced anti-India plank.
He ran an ‘India Out’ campaign in which he called for the withdrawal of some Indian military personnel present in his country. These personnel, numbering less than 100, are primarily involved in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief work in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation. However, after assuming office, Muizzu made a formal request to India to withdraw these personnel. It has now been reportedly agreed that these military personnel will be replaced by civilian Indian personnel.
In December last year, the Maldives decided not to renew a hydrography agreement with India citing national security concerns and the safeguarding of sensitive information. Under the agreement, India was allowed to conduct a comprehensive study of the island nation’s territorial waters, which includes reefs, lagoons, coastlines, ocean currents and tide levels.
Then, in early January this year, a political row broke out between India and the Maldives after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the union territory of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea and promoted it on social media as an exciting tourism destination. Though Modi did not mention any other country in his comments, some Maldivian politicians took it as the Lakshadweep being showcased as a rival to the tourism industry in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation. They made disparaging remarks against the Prime Minister and racist comments against Indians in general.
This sparked a social media backlash from Indians, including entertainment world celebrities and sports stars. Many opposition leaders and tourism industry bodies in the Maldives also criticised the Muizzu government for this. Following this, three junior ministers in the Maldives government were suspended.
Soon after the row, Muizzu went on a nearly week-long visit to China. This is a break from the practice followed by his three immediate democratically elected predecessors - Ibrahim Solih, Abdulla Yameen and Mohamed Nasheed - who had made India the destination of their first state visit after assuming office. In fact, after assuming office in November last year, Muizzu made Turkey the destination of his first state visit.
Also, in December last year, the Maldives decided to participate in the Second China-Indian Ocean Region Forum meeting on the theme of blue economy cooperation held at Kunming in China’s Yunnan province. Maldives’ Vice President Hussain Mohamed Latheef participated in the meeting instead of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) meeting that was held in Mauritius almost simultaneously. The CSC is a maritime security grouping comprising India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Mauritius with Bangladesh and the Seychelles as observer nations.
However, in a separate development in December last year in terms of India-Maldives defence ties, a meeting was held between the Maldives’ Chief of Defence Force Lt. Gen. Abdul Raheem Abdul Latheef and Indian High Commissioner to the Maldives Munu Mahawar. Later, taking to X, Abdul Raheem posted: “We reviewed ongoing defence cooperation activities & deliberated on avenues to move forward with our military-to-military engagements.”
On his part, High Commissioner Mahawar posted on X that he looked forward “to working together to further enhance India-Maldives defence cooperation towards addressing shared security challenges”.
It is amidst all these developments that Coast Guard exercise Dosti 16 is being conducted.
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