ashok321
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Why is Modi seeking US permission to remove Yameen in Maldives?
As was intimated in previous post, and something newspaper reports today confirm, the Modi government is seeking Washington’s permission to act on Maldives to restore the sanctity of the Courts in that country that ruled against President Abdulla Yameen’s staying in office. Yameen is described by his political rival and India friend Mohammad Nasheed as the “villain in paradise”, whose ouster from power is sought by Nasheed and the entire political opposition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot have a clearer picture of the emerging China threat in the Maldives than the one Nasheed has painted for Delhi. If despite this, he persists with the “frightened rabbit” policy natural to MEA that abhors coercion and “military diplomacy”, then the Indian PM will deserve every brickbat that is coming his way. Maldives, Nasheed wrote in an op/ed, is being “sold off” “piece by piece, island by island” to China. ( http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-villain-in-paradise-maldives-president-abdulla-yameen-5053962/ ).
And the Indian government will not find a cleaner cause for armed intervention. Armed for many reasons. Yameen, no babe in the political woods, is the wolf masquerading as a lamb, his bidding done not only by the Maldivan military but, more directly, by his police and his own (late Haitian dictator) Papa Duvalier-style “tonton macoute” — a sort of praetorian guard made up of young, Islamic zealots, some of them veterans of the Maldivan armed forces, who are well armed, and can and will put up a fight, seeing their future in the survival of the Yameen presidency.
These roughnecks, in the pay of the Yameen crony class-Chinese nexus, are not going to be subdued by genteel Indian diplomats in Male arguing reasonably for respecting the supreme court verdict, restoration of democratic order, rule of law, and supremacy of the Maldivan Constitution. What will persuade them and Yameen are an Indian frigate and missile destroyer (incidentally, already in the waters not too far from Male) with embarked Marcos to knock a few Maldivan heads, take Yameen into custody along with some of his personal “tonton macoute” guard, fly in Nasheed and get Maldives back on the rails.
It is a very good sign of the Indian armed services’ alertness that it is readying the necessary military wherewithal for intervention should Modi display strategic sensibility for a change and order them into Male to write finis to the Yameen episode in Maldivan history. While a joint Marcos-army paracommando operation is fine, there will be nothing more effective than a big warship or two offshore of Male to speed up Yameen’s decision to depart for exile (lest he, oops! be shot up in his presidential residence).
But Modi is sitting on his hands, awaiting an OK from the US –when this is basically India’s problem to solve with rough and ready methods. Those in MEA telling friendly press reporters that Nasheed is no angel and that he once flirted with China is to discount the prime opportunity for installing him in power, winning his gratitude, keeping the Maldives on India’s side, and for the expeditious rescinding of all contracts signed with Chinese companies for the “dual use” infrastructure they are stealthily building so that the China threat is zeroed out for the nonce.
To the other line put out in the press through friendly beat reporters by MEA that using strongarm methods will create a blowback, as Rajiv Gandhi’s blockading decision did in Nepal, besides mis-analogizing, is to not even comprehend what is at stake in the Maldives — which is not surprising considering just how habitually unstrategic MEA’s and the Indian government’s collective mind (assuming there is such a thing) is.
The larger issue that Modi’s wanting Trump’s approval for action that is centrally in Indian national interest shows up the far more worrisome trend apparent from Vajpayee’s days of surrendering the country’s sovereignty and Delhi’s capacity for sovereign decisionmaking, making it hostage to American concerns. Does Delhi expect the US to consult with it about how it treats Cuba? Or, Mexico? If not why should Modi be concerned about what Washington thinks about the hard option India may exercise in the Maldives to protect and safeguard India’s security stake in the non-China influenced Maldives? Or, have things gone so far that Modi/Doval/MEA/GOI cannot separate India’s interests from the US’?
Modi is seriously compounding his political problems that got a jolt with the Congress raking up the Rafale controversy on the cost angle — which this analyst has been stressing over the years in my books and writings (including in this blog). If Modi ends up losing the Maldives, he will find it impossible to recover his standing or “nationalist” image and reputation. What the country won’t be able militarily to recover from is the geostrategic loss of Maldives to China.
(The arrest and bloodying of Maldives opposition leaders)
The BJP government of Narendra Modi will rue not ousting Abdullah Yameen in Male now when it has the opportunity, the Maldivan opposition and people, and just cause on its side for doing so. That country’s supreme court has ruled Yameen’s imprisonment of the opposition party — Malidives Democratic Party (MDP) leaders illegal, a judgement that ipso facto voids the trumped up charges against Yameen’s political adversary and India’s friend — Mohammad Nasheed. It shows that between the political opposition and the Maldivan people, they have had enough of the idiosyncratic and authoritarian Yameen, who seems intent in depositing Maldives into China’s lap.
Nasheed has been vocal in propagating from his exile in Sri Lanka India’s right to replace Yameen, if necessary by forceful means. In fact Nasheed has gone so far as to say that Maldives is in “Ïndia’s ocean” and that China has no role in it, and definitely not in his country. This reference to Ïndia’s ocean is a response to a Chinese admiral who some years back warned that “The Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean”.
Yameen has been a thorn in India’s side and has for the last few years played Modi for the idiot he thinks the Indian Prime Minister is. Every time the situation reaches a crisis point — the last time recently when he ordered the police physically to bar the opposition members of Parliament from voting against his proposal to lease some atolls in his country to China, which would have ended that particular political pro-China initiative, he gauges Delhi’s reaction and just when he thinks the Indian govt may act, moseys over to Delhi. He did this and made peace with Modi. It is not certain what assurances the Indian PM was given by Yameen, but Delhi ended up doing nothing. Naturally Yameen has grown bolder, and has indicated he would disregard the court’s ruling and, Trump-like, change the political complexion of the supreme court by appointing his friends to the Court to ensure there are no legal challenges to his reign of terror hereafter. He is thus setting himself up as President for life of Maldives and China’s pet poodle in the region. If this isn’t provocation enough for Delhi, it is hard to know what is.
It is time for India to sort things out and for Modi to reassert India’s prime interest in having a friendly Maldivan regime at any cost — meaning without Yameen and his PPM anywhere in the picture. Yameen ought to be removed permanently from the scene. But Modi seems to be falling into the familiar do-nothing mode — the calling card of MEA and Indian diplomacy; perhaps concerting with the US to see what can be done. This is the WRONG THING for him to DO. He should without further ado immediately order a brace of frigates with a MARCOS contingent embarked on them to move post-haste to the Maldivan waters, disembark the MARCOS with full authority to disarm the Maldives police and what forces that country has and, along with a unit of army’s paracommando if needed, arrest Yameen and family and leadership elements of the corrupt ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), fly in Nasheed on special aircraft from Colombo into Male, and hand over power to him. The Indian forces can remain to assist the new Nasheed dispensation purge the local administration, police, and forces of Yameen and PPM sympathisers. And as a first order of his business ensure that all agreements with China are summarily scrapped.
There’s no time to lose. MEA’s habit of slow and ponderous pondering can be left to after this commando action to forever remove the Yameen threat from Male. Modi is increasingly being seen especially in the external realm as clinging to the US apronstrings, fulminating against Pakistan, but talking and amity and peace with China, when the priority should be to consider China the main threat and take it head on. Xi, like his predecessors in office, is good at pursuing Sun Tzu’s favourite tactic of playing up strengths and hiding weaknesses. West of Malacca, China should be made to actually feel the heat of its being on India’s turf. This India has never done.
This is how the international power game is played, not liaising with some big power or the other to see what’s the best way out of an increasingly difficult situation for India. Should Modi fail to act for any reason at all and permit Yameen to stay on, India may as well kiss Maldives good-bye and prepare to see a full-fledged Chinese naval base a stone’s throw away from the Indian mainland. It will be an ironic denouement considering all the brouhaha over Gwadar and the fact of a self-confessed “nationalist” BJP government being in power and Modi in command.
The question is: Is Modi alpha-male only for show, and at the hustings, or will he also act to protect India’s security and strategic interests?
As was intimated in previous post, and something newspaper reports today confirm, the Modi government is seeking Washington’s permission to act on Maldives to restore the sanctity of the Courts in that country that ruled against President Abdulla Yameen’s staying in office. Yameen is described by his political rival and India friend Mohammad Nasheed as the “villain in paradise”, whose ouster from power is sought by Nasheed and the entire political opposition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot have a clearer picture of the emerging China threat in the Maldives than the one Nasheed has painted for Delhi. If despite this, he persists with the “frightened rabbit” policy natural to MEA that abhors coercion and “military diplomacy”, then the Indian PM will deserve every brickbat that is coming his way. Maldives, Nasheed wrote in an op/ed, is being “sold off” “piece by piece, island by island” to China. ( http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-villain-in-paradise-maldives-president-abdulla-yameen-5053962/ ).
And the Indian government will not find a cleaner cause for armed intervention. Armed for many reasons. Yameen, no babe in the political woods, is the wolf masquerading as a lamb, his bidding done not only by the Maldivan military but, more directly, by his police and his own (late Haitian dictator) Papa Duvalier-style “tonton macoute” — a sort of praetorian guard made up of young, Islamic zealots, some of them veterans of the Maldivan armed forces, who are well armed, and can and will put up a fight, seeing their future in the survival of the Yameen presidency.
These roughnecks, in the pay of the Yameen crony class-Chinese nexus, are not going to be subdued by genteel Indian diplomats in Male arguing reasonably for respecting the supreme court verdict, restoration of democratic order, rule of law, and supremacy of the Maldivan Constitution. What will persuade them and Yameen are an Indian frigate and missile destroyer (incidentally, already in the waters not too far from Male) with embarked Marcos to knock a few Maldivan heads, take Yameen into custody along with some of his personal “tonton macoute” guard, fly in Nasheed and get Maldives back on the rails.
It is a very good sign of the Indian armed services’ alertness that it is readying the necessary military wherewithal for intervention should Modi display strategic sensibility for a change and order them into Male to write finis to the Yameen episode in Maldivan history. While a joint Marcos-army paracommando operation is fine, there will be nothing more effective than a big warship or two offshore of Male to speed up Yameen’s decision to depart for exile (lest he, oops! be shot up in his presidential residence).
But Modi is sitting on his hands, awaiting an OK from the US –when this is basically India’s problem to solve with rough and ready methods. Those in MEA telling friendly press reporters that Nasheed is no angel and that he once flirted with China is to discount the prime opportunity for installing him in power, winning his gratitude, keeping the Maldives on India’s side, and for the expeditious rescinding of all contracts signed with Chinese companies for the “dual use” infrastructure they are stealthily building so that the China threat is zeroed out for the nonce.
To the other line put out in the press through friendly beat reporters by MEA that using strongarm methods will create a blowback, as Rajiv Gandhi’s blockading decision did in Nepal, besides mis-analogizing, is to not even comprehend what is at stake in the Maldives — which is not surprising considering just how habitually unstrategic MEA’s and the Indian government’s collective mind (assuming there is such a thing) is.
The larger issue that Modi’s wanting Trump’s approval for action that is centrally in Indian national interest shows up the far more worrisome trend apparent from Vajpayee’s days of surrendering the country’s sovereignty and Delhi’s capacity for sovereign decisionmaking, making it hostage to American concerns. Does Delhi expect the US to consult with it about how it treats Cuba? Or, Mexico? If not why should Modi be concerned about what Washington thinks about the hard option India may exercise in the Maldives to protect and safeguard India’s security stake in the non-China influenced Maldives? Or, have things gone so far that Modi/Doval/MEA/GOI cannot separate India’s interests from the US’?
Modi is seriously compounding his political problems that got a jolt with the Congress raking up the Rafale controversy on the cost angle — which this analyst has been stressing over the years in my books and writings (including in this blog). If Modi ends up losing the Maldives, he will find it impossible to recover his standing or “nationalist” image and reputation. What the country won’t be able militarily to recover from is the geostrategic loss of Maldives to China.
(The arrest and bloodying of Maldives opposition leaders)
The BJP government of Narendra Modi will rue not ousting Abdullah Yameen in Male now when it has the opportunity, the Maldivan opposition and people, and just cause on its side for doing so. That country’s supreme court has ruled Yameen’s imprisonment of the opposition party — Malidives Democratic Party (MDP) leaders illegal, a judgement that ipso facto voids the trumped up charges against Yameen’s political adversary and India’s friend — Mohammad Nasheed. It shows that between the political opposition and the Maldivan people, they have had enough of the idiosyncratic and authoritarian Yameen, who seems intent in depositing Maldives into China’s lap.
Nasheed has been vocal in propagating from his exile in Sri Lanka India’s right to replace Yameen, if necessary by forceful means. In fact Nasheed has gone so far as to say that Maldives is in “Ïndia’s ocean” and that China has no role in it, and definitely not in his country. This reference to Ïndia’s ocean is a response to a Chinese admiral who some years back warned that “The Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean”.
Yameen has been a thorn in India’s side and has for the last few years played Modi for the idiot he thinks the Indian Prime Minister is. Every time the situation reaches a crisis point — the last time recently when he ordered the police physically to bar the opposition members of Parliament from voting against his proposal to lease some atolls in his country to China, which would have ended that particular political pro-China initiative, he gauges Delhi’s reaction and just when he thinks the Indian govt may act, moseys over to Delhi. He did this and made peace with Modi. It is not certain what assurances the Indian PM was given by Yameen, but Delhi ended up doing nothing. Naturally Yameen has grown bolder, and has indicated he would disregard the court’s ruling and, Trump-like, change the political complexion of the supreme court by appointing his friends to the Court to ensure there are no legal challenges to his reign of terror hereafter. He is thus setting himself up as President for life of Maldives and China’s pet poodle in the region. If this isn’t provocation enough for Delhi, it is hard to know what is.
It is time for India to sort things out and for Modi to reassert India’s prime interest in having a friendly Maldivan regime at any cost — meaning without Yameen and his PPM anywhere in the picture. Yameen ought to be removed permanently from the scene. But Modi seems to be falling into the familiar do-nothing mode — the calling card of MEA and Indian diplomacy; perhaps concerting with the US to see what can be done. This is the WRONG THING for him to DO. He should without further ado immediately order a brace of frigates with a MARCOS contingent embarked on them to move post-haste to the Maldivan waters, disembark the MARCOS with full authority to disarm the Maldives police and what forces that country has and, along with a unit of army’s paracommando if needed, arrest Yameen and family and leadership elements of the corrupt ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), fly in Nasheed on special aircraft from Colombo into Male, and hand over power to him. The Indian forces can remain to assist the new Nasheed dispensation purge the local administration, police, and forces of Yameen and PPM sympathisers. And as a first order of his business ensure that all agreements with China are summarily scrapped.
There’s no time to lose. MEA’s habit of slow and ponderous pondering can be left to after this commando action to forever remove the Yameen threat from Male. Modi is increasingly being seen especially in the external realm as clinging to the US apronstrings, fulminating against Pakistan, but talking and amity and peace with China, when the priority should be to consider China the main threat and take it head on. Xi, like his predecessors in office, is good at pursuing Sun Tzu’s favourite tactic of playing up strengths and hiding weaknesses. West of Malacca, China should be made to actually feel the heat of its being on India’s turf. This India has never done.
This is how the international power game is played, not liaising with some big power or the other to see what’s the best way out of an increasingly difficult situation for India. Should Modi fail to act for any reason at all and permit Yameen to stay on, India may as well kiss Maldives good-bye and prepare to see a full-fledged Chinese naval base a stone’s throw away from the Indian mainland. It will be an ironic denouement considering all the brouhaha over Gwadar and the fact of a self-confessed “nationalist” BJP government being in power and Modi in command.
The question is: Is Modi alpha-male only for show, and at the hustings, or will he also act to protect India’s security and strategic interests?
