Last week, India began the withdrawal of the hundred troops stationed for several years in the Maldives. This Sunday, a joint statement from the bilateral working group, signed in Malé, confirmed that 25 Indian soldiers have been withdrawn and replaced by civilians in Addu atoll, the southernmost of the archipelago. The rest of the troops - including army medical personnel - must be withdrawn before May 10, according to the commitment made with Mohamed Muizzu, the new Maldivian president.
Muizzu won last year's presidential election under the slogan "India, out." His predecessor, Ibrahim Solih, had come to power with an opposite motto, "India first."
Hence the former has earned the label "pro-Chinese" from the Indian press, which considers the latter pro-Indian. In any case, the readjustment between the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean does not catch India on the wrong foot. Last week, the Indian Navy inaugurated its naval base on the island of Minicoy, a few dozen miles north of the Republic of Maldives, deploying one of its warships there. Although very few Indians have ever heard of Minicoy - although their best cans of tuna come from there - it is an Indian company of great strategic interest, despite its tenuous ties with India. Unlike the rest of the Laccadive archipelago - to which it administratively belongs - the native population of the ten villages of Minicoy does not speak Malayalam - one of the four great languages of southern India - but Maldivian.
Indian caution has gone further and last month it inaugurated another modest naval and air base built with the authorization of Mauritius on the northern island of the A Galega archipelago (which effectively means The Gallega). A compensation for the attempt to have a base of operations on the remote Assumption Island, which was frustrated by a change of government in the Seychelles. The greater receptivity of Mauritius has to do both with the Indian origin of the vast majority of its population and with the frustration of its government because the United Kingdom continues to turn a deaf ear to its demand for the return of the Chagos and other pending Indian islands. decolonization. All of them were emptied of their population of African origin, except Diego García, which houses an important US nuclear submarine base.
He was removed from power for reasons less ideological than practical. While China's cooperation had completed several key infrastructure projects, this was not the case for Indian-sponsored projects.
However, the labels are still there. Indian susceptibility is fueled by China's obvious interest in increasing its influence in its neighborhood. Last week, a People's Liberation Army delegation toured three countries in its orbit: Nepal (where the Maoist Prachanda is back in power), Sri Lanka (where India has regained ground) and the Maldives itself. In Male, the Chinese military expressed its support for the sovereignty and independence of the archipelago.
Just yesterday, President Muizzu proclaimed that no country will police Maldivian territorial waters on his behalf. Although it is a huge task, for a country with more than a thousand islands for half a million inhabitants, in a water perimeter of nearly one million square kilometers. To deny that greater independence from India has to translate into dependence on China, Muizzu presented the first Maldivian maritime surveillance drones last week. These are three Turkish-made Bayraktar, a gift from Ankara.
The Maldives will hold parliamentary elections in a month. It is not unreasonable to think that India contemplates a clearly adverse result for Muizzu's party as a last opportunity to slow down, stop or reverse its military exit from the archipelago.
It should be noted that the mass media in New Delhi and Mumbai, whose plurality has greatly reduced in recent years, compete for any story that fuels the conflict of interests between India and China. These created a storm in a glass of water over a minister's tweet, in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Gaza (Palestine), in which she called Narendra Modi a "clown" and "Israel's puppet" for his stance on the conflict (unprecedented, in fact, in the history of India). The minister, Mariyam Shiuna, was suspended.
So much so that, in a matter of weeks, a campaign was launched with Bollywood support to boycott Indian tourism in the Maldives and renewed attempts to promote the no less Muslim, but Indian, archipelago of the Laccadives as an alternative. In the same vein as the "Wed in India/Marry in India" campaign sponsored by Narendra Modi and which would have convinced one of his two favorite tycoons, Mukesh Ambani, to celebrate in Gujarat and not in the Seyechelles, Dubai or Istanbul, the apotheotic waste of his son's prenuptial banquet, a few days ago, with Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg and Rihanna among the guests.
Narendra Modi himself will face the verdict of the polls - in reality, his party, in a parliamentary system like Spain's - shortly. This weekend the dates for holding the Indian legislative elections were announced, which will take place consecutively in its different states, in seven phases, between April 19 and June 1.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, Wang Yi began the first official trip by a Chinese Foreign Minister to Australia in seven years, a trip that will also take him to New Zealand. The Sino-Australian tensions of recent years were exacerbated during the time when Donald Trump was in the White House and the conservative Scott Morrison in Canberra. But the shock wave has continued to spread across Oceania. Coinciding with Wang Yi's tour, Fiji said yesterday that it is resuming police cooperation with China, which had been paralyzed for a year under pressure from Australia.
(Below, a series of tweets by Narendra Modi encouraging his compatriots to opt for the Lakshadweep triggered visceral reactions from several members of the Maldivian government, later disavowed and suspended)
