Waterworlds

India’s latest power projection, illustrates the belief amongst New Delhi’s military planners that its strategic interests extend from the Gulf of Aden to the Malacca Straits. This was first put on paper post-Pokharan II in the strategic dialogue with the Clinton administration and has now been translated into action by the Manmohan Singh government. The Tabar action appears to have been carefully calibrated; the foreign ministry had earlier shot down a navy proposal to launch a commando mission to rescue the largely Indian crew on board the Stolt Valor, a Japanese merchant ship hijacked by pirates on September 15. South Block apparently did not agree with the navy on intervention; it was a case, after all, of a Japanese ship in Somalia’s territorial waters. However, that same day in October, Defence Minister A.K. Antony cleared the navy’s twin proposals: patrolling international waters from Salalah in Oman to the Gulf of Aden, and urgently exploring the possibilities for joint patrols with other countries.

The alacrity with which the patrolling proposal was cleared by the government and the frigate Gomati dispatched is understandable. The distance between Bab-el-Mandeb, on the mouth of the Suez, to the Gulf of Aden near the horn of Africa is about 800-900 nautical miles; 500 miles of that, primarily off the east coast of the virtual failed state of Somalia, brims with pirates. The Suez Canal records 20,000 ships moving through it annually and accounts for 7 per cent of the global oil trade. The Malacca Straits account for one-fourth of world oil and trade transportation. A major incident on either of the two portals to the Indian Ocean and world trade is severely hit, with a direct effect on commodity prices.

New Delhi took the right decision, choosing not to rely on Western navies to resolve a situation aboard an Indian flag carrier. Its navy is aptly trained for the job. Nine years ago, a task force led by the destroyer Delhi dealt with the hijacking by Indonesian pirates of the Japanese merchant ship Alondra Rainbow off the Konkan coast. The navy showed its capabilities again in December 2004 when relief supplies on board the destroyer Mysore were dispatched to Male within four hours of the tsunami striking the Indian subcontinent. Another destroyer, Mumbai, along with frigates Betwa and Brahmaputra and logistics ship Shakti evacuated Indian peacekeepers from Lebanon in July 2006 at the peak of the Israeli military operations in that country.

While the navy has shown that it is more than adept at giving New Delhi sufficient leverage in operational situations in the Indian Ocean, it has most often chosen to play lone ranger and, to be fair, has succeeded. Although searching for a pirate dhow in the expanse of international waters near the horn of Africa is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, New Delhi chose not to join the Djibouti-based 14-nation combined task force 150 due to political sensitivities. This is because it was essentially a US-led initiative connected to the Afghan and Iraq wars. Also, Pakistan was part of the multilateral force. This stand was taken by the NDA regime and has been followed by the UPA government.

Rather than seek a cooperative mechanism to ensure the safety of its commercial shipping, India has been at odds with major navies operating in the Indian Ocean and has sometimes even found itself in a corner. During the 2006 Lebanon evacuation, Indian naval ships were low on fuel on the high seas; but the US Fifth Fleet refused to replenish the tanker Shakti as India did not have a logistics support agreement with the US.

Although the Indo-US framework for maritime security cooperation was signed during George W. Bush’s March 2006 visit, India has not been able to conclude the logistics support agreement with the US due to pressure from the Left parties. The bilateral framework includes comprehensive measures to address questions of security for sea-going commerce. When Antony visited Washington last September, Defence Secretary Robert Gates asked him what prevented New Delhi from signing the agreement. Antony said it would be signed soon, but there has been no forward movement on it to date, mostly due to its political sensitivity.

Given that global threats from non-state players are multiplying, New Delhi should give up its lone ranger attitude and tie up bilaterally or multilaterally with big naval powers to tackle piracy on the high seas. If India is still coy about tying up with the US Fifth Fleet in Aden or its Seventh Fleet in Malacca, it can utilise the High Committee on Defence meeting in Paris this month to tie up with the French navy. Otherwise, the only, tedious, option for the navy is to go back to Oman under its operational turnaround agreement for refuelling after each long-range patrol in the area. With India aspiring to notch up five per cent of global trade by 2020 from the present 1.2 per cent, it would be in its interests not only to build up the navy’s capacity to exercise its influence but also to explore cooperative mechanisms to ensure a free flow of goods.

shishir.gupta@expressindia.com