The Maldives is a chain of atolls in the Arabian Sea, south west of Sri Lanka with only a population of 400,000, has been in the news since the beginning of February this year. The capital city Male, where one-third of the country's population live, is just 2.4 metres above the sea level. In many other islands the elevation of the land goes down to 1.2 meters. The Maldives faces an existential threat resulting from climate change. Historically, for centuries this small archipelago served as a stopping point for Arab seafarers. The country with hundreds of coral islands spread over hundreds of miles was also located in the path of one of the major sea lanes. Now the Maldives is a very popular tourist destination, nearly 1.4 million tourists worldwide travelled to the Maldives in 2017 and the country earned US$2.7 billion from tourism during the same year (tourism contributes 28 per cent to the country's gross domestic product or GDP).
But the country got engulfed in a political turmoil as the President of the country Abdulla Yameen declared a state of emergency on February 05 this year. However, the President withdrew the state of emergency on March 22 after it was in force for 45 days.
It seems to me I have the misfortune that my visit to a country quite often gets marred by political turmoils just before my arrival, or I arrive in the country just in the middle of a riot or a political upheaval or during my stay serious political turmoils erupt bringing the capital city to a standstill, causing the closure of the airport and I thus get stranded in the country. This is somewhat reminiscent of the experience of the famous Polish journalist and author Riszard Kapunscinski who always happened to be in the middle of wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. Kapunscinski's chronicles of all the dusty retinues of the third world courts like those of Reza Pahlavi of Iran and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia provide glimpses of autocrats of his time. His vivid descriptions of cascading sequences of third world dramas captured the deep political rupture caused by tin-pot dictators and tyrants during his time as a journalist. Now in the second decade of the 21st century we are almost back to the world where Kapunscinski spent his working life.
I planned my visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka in early January for the visits taking place in late February to early March. The news of the state of emergency in the Maldives almost sounded to me like trouble in a paradise. My friends in the know of my planned trip to the Maldives asked me to use caution but I decided to go ahead with the planned trip anyway given that I would be staying in a remote island except for one day in the capital city. I arrived in the Maldives in very late February and I was surprised to see everything was running normal in my holiday resort. Even during my very brief stay in the capital city Male, I found life was going on pretty normal.
But underneath the normalcy, troubles were brewing. This is not the first time the Maldives faced a political crisis. The latest political crisis is the culmination of a standoff between President Abdulla Yameen and the Maldives Supreme Court. On February 01, the Court quashed the conviction of nine opponents of the President, including the former President Mohammed Nasheed, and ordered their immediate release. The verdict rattled the President as the court decision threatened his parliamentary majority and would have allowed his rival Nasheed (now in exile in London) to contest the Presidential election due later this year. As the opposition protest started to gather momentum, President Yameen moved quickly to counter the court order by declaring a state of emergency on February 05. Under the emergency power, he arrested two Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice, and opposition leaders, including the former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (President Yameen's half brother), and cracked down on opposition protests. Under pressure, the remaining judges of the Supreme Court rescinded the February 01 court decision.
Though the state of emergency has now gone, the President's repression against his opponents still continues. In fact, the day before the emergency, police filed terrorism charges against his principal opponents. If convicted, the accused could face a jail term extending from 10 to 15 years. Two judges and a judicial officer are charged with receiving bribes to help overthrow the government.
The presidential office issued a statement declaring that the President had decided to lift the emergency in an effort to promote normalcy but the real reason clearly was to deflect international criticism. In this-power play in the domestic front, Yameen has the support of the army who declared that they would stand in defence of the lawful government.
President Yameen ignored calls from the USA, the European Union (EU) and India to lift emergency and respect the court decision. Their concerns were not so much for restoration of democracy and the rule law but more to do with President's close ties with China and the broader power struggle between China and India which has now become the principal proxy for the USA in this region. India provided support for the authoritarian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoon for decades to the point of militarily intervening in 1988 to save his regime from collapse.
Nasheed has asked India to intervene as it had done in 1988. China has in recent times bolstered its investment in the Maldives and this India views as a challenge to its self-assumed prominence in the archipelago. During Nasheed's term in office, he promoted pro-India policy. Nasheed's call to intervene prompted India to issue a veiled threat that it was "disturbed'' by the emergency imposed on the country. As usual, India's new-found patron, the USA, along its another client state the UK, also expressed their very deep concerns. The USA even issued a veiled threat - "The world is watching''.
But the geo-political landscape in recent times has radically changed in the region. Since Yameen has become President in 2012, there has been a definite China-friendly tilt in the foreign policy of the Maldives. Yameen has signed up to China's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative to which both India and its new found patron, the USA, are hostile. Last December, China and the Maldives signed a free trade agreement. China has made investments in numerous infra-structure projects such as the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge between the International airport and Male, the capital city.
The current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has lost any sense of distinguishing between mythology and history in the context of his own country, once again got into the business of mythologising OBOR as a means of regional power grabbing by China. But OBOR is not designed to extend geopolitical influence by military might; it is all about trade and investment connectivity which will give economic clout to China but not military clout.
Meanwhile, China has taken a definitive stand on the political crisis in the Maldives. China has quite bluntly declared that the political crisis in the Maldives is an "internal affair'' and "outside powers", hinting mainly at India, should not get involved. To give substance to its warning, the Chinese navy conducted a naval exercise in the East Indian Ocean.
Yameen is definitely getting the upper hand now in the domestic front but on the international front, the geopolitical rivalry in the region will continue and that implies India will continue with its anti-China coalition with the USA and its client states, Japan and Australia. The Maldives remains very much on the US radar in the context of the increased Chinese presence in the region. The quadrilateral alliance of the USA with its three client states, Australia, Japan and India, is going to discuss the Maldives crisis in their next meeting. As the epicentre of global power is shifting eastward, the American dream of global dominance is turning into nightmares. The quadrilateral alliance is all about making an attempt by the USA with the support its client states in Indo-Pacific region to prevent that power shift to the East.
Muhammad Mahmood is an
independent economic and
political analyst.
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