India’ll pay for being hands off

It is still not clear what backlash India will face due to its hands-off policy that let the Mahinda Rajapaksa government carry out such a brutal attack on Tamil areas in its quest to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). But to seasoned observers, there is definitely a winner in this aggressive Rajapaksa move: China.

China was Lanka’s biggest military supplier as the island’s forces went after the LTTE in an operation in which the magnitude of civilian deaths remains unclear. In the past four years, China supplied over $100 million worth of military wares. Beijing operates a military warehouse in Hambantota, from where the Lankan military can pick up whatever it wants. India in comparison has supplied only $30 million worth of non-offensive systems.

India’s frustration with China’s growing clout sometimes spills out in the open. Home minister P Chidambaram said recently, as he spoke of Lanka, “China is fishing in troubled waters. That is a lone, discordant voice among all of the global community.”

Once India was Lanka’s most important partner. Today, China is Lanka’s largest donor. It’s aid last year was over $1 billion, a fivefold rise over the previous year. “Trade, aid, and military ties go hand-in-hand for the Chinese,” says Sujit Dutta of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

China and Pakistan are bigger military suppliers to Lanka than India; fatal errors of Indian policy have helped China to strengthen its presence on the island. Sources in government and outside cite Lanka’s award of a contract to build Hambantota port to the Chinese as an example of India’s faltering diplomacy. The port overlooks important sea routes in the Indian Ocean.

The port, a billion-dollar project, will be completed in 15 years with a refinery, bunkering terminal, power plant, and ship- and container-repair yards. In an emergency, “it will  be available to the Chinese navy”, an intelligence source says. “It was our biggest failure,” says a policy analyst. “It is a strategic foothold for them.” He and many others attribute the loss of Hambantota to “diplomatic complacency”.

Former navy chief admiral Arun Prakash says when Hambantota was lost, India should have come up with a “back-up package”. “It required the foreign ministry and the military to work in cohesion.”

“We can expect China to pursue its ambitions, be it Lanka, Nepal or Myanmar,” says Deb Mukharji, former Indian ambassador to Nepal. “I don’t think our policy should be reactive to what China does. We have enormous assets in the neighbourhood. We must build on them. If not, it is our failure.”

Mukharji says the ideas are there. “What we require is greater stamina in pursuing those ideas.” Mukharji is worried about India’s approach in Nepal. “I am disturbed at recent developments,” he says. “India should be seen to be in tune with the aspirations of the Nepali people.”

Blunders of diplomacy, an unfounded fear of the Maoists, and reliance on old, unpopular friends have turned Kathmandu to Chinese arms. “At the highest levels, our leadership suspects, without reason, a conspiracy between Nepal’s Maoists and India’s naxalites. This fear and a lack of understanding of the ground situation have led us to this embarrassing situation,” a senior official says.

India tried to mount diplomatic pressure on prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda not to sack the army chief, general Rookmangud Katawal. As Dahal quit after the president refused to toe his line, the Maoists were clear whom to blame: India.
In the run-up to last week’s standoff, Dahal was open to India negotiating between him and the army top brass, but, strangely, New Delhi didn’t take it up. At the same time, South Block sent its ambassador in Kathmandu at least four times to tell Dahal not to sack Katawal. “India lost its nerve,” says a source.

“The success of Maoist integration into Nepal’s mainstream politics would have been the greatest message to our naxals. But we are getting everything messed up,” says a retired officer who handled Nepal for long. “The Maoists are not entirely free from fault. The army chief would have retired in four months, but India should have stuck to its commitment to civilian supremacy.”

But those nuanced arguments do not justify the huge loss of initiative with the Maoists, who are today Nepal’s most popular political party.

For some years China has been trying to woo Nepal as a strategic partner. The Maoists, like most other parties, have been trying to play China and India to gain the most. “We should have used our natural advantages in Nepal,” says another source. But New Delhi has been shutting its eyes to the Nepali army brass, openly briefing foreigners and cozying up to the Nepali Congress.