Maldives Democracy Crisis - The Hindu (23.02.18)

(Latest Op-Ed First; Verbatim Compilation of The Hindu Op-Ed)

Talk like a South Asian (23.02.18)

The Maldives imbroglio has become a fable for international politics. Politics, especially international politics, often appears to be an eerie combination of slapstick and farce. One sees an exhibition of egos, of the sheer pomposity of power barely hidden behind sanctimonious words like national interest and security. Whenever Chinese one-upmanship finesses India in the neighbourhood, we fall back on exercises in pedantry, unaware that India cuts a sorry figure in the local political scene. Our obsession with Pakistan and China makes us indifferent to other countries in the neighbourhood. South Asia as place, as a bubbling culture of diversity, gets converted to space or at the most to turf or territory. The future of India as a South Asian imagination becomes dim as India turns hysterical over China’s entry into the Maldives. Yet three things are obvious. We have no sense of the Maldives. We treat their politicians as vassals who have become rebels. We are almost orientalist in our attitudes to islands like the Maldives, Mauritius, treating them as lesser orders of political reality. It is as if the annexation of Sikkim is our chosen model for South Asian politics.

A limiting framework

One thing is clear. Not much can be expected within the current framework of policy, where categories like security operate in a Pavlovian style and India acts only when it sees a Pakistani or Chinese move. The current frameworks and mentalities add little to policy. India needs to see South Asia as a new imaginary if the idea of India and Indian foreign policy is to succeed.

South Asia is a tapestry of myriad ecologies from islands to mountains, a confluence of civilisations, religions and regions. India is today the dominant power, but beyond a sense of hegemony, it plays bully and Mr. Simplicissimus. One needs to add the power of these diverse imaginations to an emerging hybridity called India. Consider a few examples. During the recent Cyclone Ockhi, a priest told me, we are fisherman, we think from sea to land but we are run by a land-locked regime. An understanding of island geographies could broaden into ecological imagination, create new imaginaries to unlock India’s land-locked mindset. An island imaginary adds as much to our imagination and alters our attitude to marginal people on our coastlines.

Watching South Asia, one senses India lacks of a sense of neighbourhood and region as a component of our imagination. Take Kathmandu. The similarities between India and Nepal are immense, and yet India lacks any comprehension of Nepal’s fierce sense of itself. By playing big brother, India repeatedly displays a lack of sense of the diversities around which need a new sense of unity. By acting as a bully or an un-empathetic headmaster wielding the stick, India reveals an absence of its South Asian self. It issues warnings to the Maldives or Nepal, threatening them not to be seduced by the Chinese imperative, but it does little to sustain the reciprocity and autonomy of the relationship. A change in tactics is not enough; one needs a sense of strategy, a paradigmatic argument for a new South Asia which adds to the creativity of Indian democracy.

Time for renewal

Reflecting on this context, one is reminded of a South African proverb which says one must invent a stranger to renew oneself. The stranger is the other that renews the self, reveals the unities and reciprocities behind difference. In the South Asian context, India must adapt these words of wisdom by inventing and reinventing the neighbour every day. It has to invent a South Asia which is civilisational, reciprocal, local in its diversity. Merely thinking as a nation state reveals the procrustean nature of the Indian mind, making it a victim of 19th century mindsets.

Even experiments which could have been promising have lost their creative power. One of the most exciting of these regional ideas was the creation of the South Asian University (SAU), with a faculty from all South Asian countries. While we have the faculty, what we lack is a South Asian theory of culture and knowledge which should anchor this imagination. SAU looks like any other university, part of the embassy set in South Delhi. It needs a manifesto which makes South Asia central to its imagination. Such a manifesto must transform ecology and culture into a theory of South Asian diversity and difference. The borderland, the frontier, the island, the riverine communities have to anchor a local imagination which diversifies South Asia as a region. Out of ecology should emerge a creative sense of regionalism as a new style of ecological politics rather than treating the region as a lesser order of politics in a global regime.

Second, the availability of eccentricity as dissent, alternatives, minorities has to be reworked constitutionally so the focus is not on trite obsessions with India-Pakistan but a genuine exploration of voices and theories. One has to weave ideas of Swadeshi and Swaraj into foreign policy, where South Asia creates the availability of vernaculars. SAU as a dialogue of ecologies, religions, vernaculars located in a civilisational frame can add to the ideas of knowledge, sustain memories and defeated cultures without getting bogged in the modern sentimentality called development. South Asia as a concept to be sustainable and creative has to be life-giving.

Diversity becomes the next axis of the South Asia imagination. Between its demographic density and its ethnic diversity, South Asia offers an experiment in religious dialogue, an exercise in the cultivation of informal economies, a surge for human rights where culture and livelihoods become central. The creativity of civil society and social movements marks the dynamism of these regions. In fact, South Asia is going to become a site for the growing battle between human rights/cultural diversity and the fundamentalist imagination.

South Asia, with its motley collection of minorities, has to rethink the question of the border and border crossings which are so crucial to the survival of these groups. One is thinking not only of the Rohingya, but the Rohingya as a paradigm for border crossings. We need an open idea of hospitality and the nation so ethnic imaginations do not merely become destabilising but provide new vernaculars of the imagination in terms of inventive notions of citizenship, livelihood and regionalism. One has to allow for tribal, ethnic, nomadic and pastoral groups moving freely without being hounded by the panopticon called the boundary.

A warning signal

One has to be clear it is not the immediacy and constant intrusiveness of China or the bellicosity of Pakistan which can trigger a new South Asian identity and imagination. Security is too narrow and provincial a base either for the sustenance of diversity or for the promotion of peace. The so-called imbroglio of the Maldives must be a warning signal to persuade civil society groups like human rights activists, media, university academics to articulate a new idea of South Asian identity and democracy, to revive the neighbourhood as an imagination, when globalism is turning colourless. We need a movement from muscular diplomacy, which we are poor at, to a diplomacy of diversity for the South Asian imagination and drama to be reinvented again. Democracy in India cannot exist without the extension of the democratic imagination to the region. South Asia as an imaginary becomes text and the pretext for such an experiment. An India with a new South Asian identity triggers a new imagination beyond the dullness of security and nation state.

Shiv Visvanathan is a member of Compost Heap, a group of activists and academics exploring alternative imaginations and futures

India remains in the best position to help us: Mohamed Nasheed (21.02.18)

The Maldives remains in crisis after President Abdulla Yameen imposed emergency on February 5, following the Supreme Court overturning the imprisonment of his political rivals. Among them is a former Maldivian President and leader of the opposition, Mohamed Nasheed, who wants India to intervene in the situation. In a wide-ranging interview conducted over many days as political developments in the Maldives unfold, Mr. Nasheed, who is with the Maldivian Democratic Party, says he believes that the emergency is not the biggest crisis the Maldives faces. He lists China’s “land grab” and the threat of the Islamic State (IS) as bigger challenges. Excerpts:

The situation in the Maldives appears to be fluid, with the Yameen government’s decision on the emergency. However, given that it appears to control both the judiciary and the parliament, has the opposition run out of options?

The government is unable to extend the state of emergency legally, because they don’t have the 43 MPs in the Majlis that must vote in favour of it. This means that the emergency, and any extension to it, is illegal. It also means that any actions taken by the government or security forces using emergency powers are illegal. Meanwhile, the Chief Justice and another Supreme Court Justice have been illegally detained. This means anything decided by the remaining SC justices is invalid. President Yameen is ruling down the barrel of a gun. There is zero legitimacy to anything he is doing.

India has asked that the government abide by the court’s original ruling and lift the emergency. What is your reaction to that?

I welcome the statement by the Ministry of External Affairs. I urge the government to fully comply with it.

The government has offered multiparty talks as well. How do you respond to that?

We would like to see the government create an environment that is conducive to talks. It is very difficult for us to sit down while the Chief Justice is in jail, other judges are in jail, the former President is in jail, and all political leaders are in jail, and there is emergency rule. So, we would like President Yameen to create an environment where both sides can trust each other and sit down [for talks]. But, at present, the general view is that President Yameen is trying to buy time. So, when we sit down to try to find a solution, we do want the international community to underwrite talks. The United Nations should be engaged in them as well.

There is a whole host of things that have to be done now before we sit down. Even a month ago… we were quite willing to sit down without any conditions. But now [Mr. Yameen] has dragged the situation down so much, it is very difficult to talk.

You’re saying he must revert to the status quo ante. What else would it take for you to feel comfortable to enter into these talks?

For instance, the Supreme Court ruling [dismissing charges against nine political opposition leaders] cannot be part of political talks.

How sure are you of your strength in the Majlis? You had started a process to impeach the Speaker that didn’t succeed. And the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) claims it has a majority in the House.

Let’s do it then — let’s have all our MPs in and let’s have a vote. We clearly have a parliamentary majority. And we believe there are several members of the PPM who are not happy with the status quo and who do not want to support what President Yameen has done. So I think we will have more than the 44 required for a majority. It may be 55.

And if elections take place, will the opposition be united? Will your coalition include leaders like President Yameen’s former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb, or businessman Gasim Ibrahim, who are accused of attempted murder and terror?

Well, the coalition is between all the parties, not individuals. It will have the Adhaalath Party, the Jumhooree Party, and the PPM that is led by [former] President Gayoom and the Maldivian Democratic Party.

You have appealed to India to send an envoy to the Maldives. What is it that you want India to do?

I think India must be on the ground in Male with an envoy and try to ensure that President Yameen relents. My view is that India has a number of other tools and I believe India has the imagination to use them. I have never asked for boots on the ground.

But you have used the term gunboat diplomacy, which evokes war scenarios. That sounds quite drastic.

No. In fact, gunboat diplomacy doesn’t mean an attack; it means a show of strength. I feel we are at a defining moment in the Indian Ocean and we must depart from the past. There is an effort on to change the state type in the Maldives… to move from democracy back to dictatorship, using money power. So, what I am saying is not drastic. If, in August 2018, President Yameen is elected unopposed, the Maldives will go into at least 10 years of autocratic rule, and after that I don’t think India or any other country will be able to pull us out of it. We have always seen India as a net provider of security and safety in the region, for the past 600 years. So, we mustn’t lose the moment.

Do you see the Maldives becoming an area of contestation, buffeted by the roles that India, China and the U.S. now play in the Indian Ocean?

Yes, we seem to be a bit sandwiched there. The U.S., however, seems to be looking more and more inwards, and we don’t feel they are willing to exert their power in the ocean, and have outsourced their policy to others. So, India remains in the best position to help us.

What do you think will happen next?

I think Mr. Yameen is trying to get the Chief Justice to resign, so he will have the emergency rule until he is able to achieve that. The Chief Justice’s family told me that he remains strong, and I am hopeful he will not resign. If he doesn’t resign, I think the emergency will carry on.

In 2012, you too had ordered the detention of a judge who gave bail to an Islamist group that had defaced some statues during the SAARC summit. The accusation against you is that when you were in power, you did the same thing.

Well, power does have this sense of continuity. As a leader, I came in after decades of single party autocratic rule, and some systems remained strong. You can topple a dictator, but it is very difficult to uproot dictatorship. Yes, if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have done that. We were very young in democracy; our political party was only 12 years old. But yes, given a chance, I would have done otherwise.

Despite all this, you have often said that the real crisis in the Maldives is not dealing with dictatorship. Describe the situation you see there, and what is of deepest concern to you.

Yes, you are right, this is not the real crisis in the Maldives. I have been tortured twice; I have spent the good half of my adult life in jail. But I’m afraid this is not the real crisis. The real crisis in the Maldives springs from two recent developments. First, the development of a state within the Maldives by the IS. Second, attempts by emerging powers to change state type, with a view to drive land grab. During the last 40 years, Saudi Arabia has propagated a very narrow version of Islam that has created a breeding ground for jihadi movements. We are now in a very worrying situation where the Maldives has sent the most number of people per capita than any country to fight for the IS. Hundreds of Maldivians have joined jihadi groups. This could not have been achieved without a very solid network in the Maldives. At present, the issue becomes a crisis as the IS is being flushed out of Syria and the Levant. They are coming home to the Maldives.

But also, a far more sophisticated attack on the Maldives is happening without a single shot being fired. Although land grabs are occurring worldwide, they are more common in countries where the protection of human rights is poor. Due to a combination of international and domestic drivers, the Maldives has become a flourishing land-grab paradise. Without firing a single shot, China has grabbed more land than what the East India Company had at the height of the colonial era. They have weaponised foreign direct investments. Instead of rifles, bayonets and cartridges, the weapons in the new colonial arsenal are bribery, corruption and dubious investments. I don’t have anything against foreign direct investment, per se. But there is a process that must be followed: there should be open tenders, competitive bidding, and democratic scrutiny.

You were President for four years. During your tenure, you allowed the Chinese mission to be set up and invited Chinese business. Why didn’t you do anything then?

In 2007, President Gayoom visited China and appointed a Maldivian Ambassador there. In our government I had no choice but to allow that. In India, there seems to be a trust deficit about us. But establishing an embassy doesn’t mean that we were also facilitating land grabs.

India was the only country in the region, minus Bhutan, which didn’t join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What must India do to counter China’s troublesome, but obviously attractive, influence in South Asia?

It’s not about deep pockets. Look, in the past, the Maldives became a middle-income country, primarily through development loans from the State Bank of India. And people in the Maldives don’t forget that. It’s not about how deep your pockets are but how you run the process. India has the ability to provide more sustainable loans for Indian Ocean countries, and that is where it has an edge.

If you were to come to power, you may be able to reverse the crisis with the land grab. But how would you reverse the IS problem?

Well, first you have to tackle the problem internally, as that is how radicalisation works. How did IS take over a big city like Mosul? Because first they eat it from the inside, they go deep and spread their ideas inside, so when they attack, no one counters it. And my fear is, that process is already under way in the Maldives.

Let the chips fall where they may (12.02.18)

Dealing with the unfolding political drama in the Maldives, which has undeniable geopolitical implications for New Delhi, requires a great deal of craft, patience and diplomacy. Not force. More importantly, restoring democracy and civil liberties in Male, or anywhere else in the region, should not be our business. It’s for the islanders there to do that as they deem fit. And yet, New Delhi must look after its strategic interests in the increasingly chaotic Indian Ocean Region. The success of Indian diplomacy would lie in striking the ‘Goldilocks’ balance in dealing with Male; neither too hot nor too cold.

India’s Male dilemma

Ever since Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom became the President of the island nation in 2013, the country has grown closer to China, and has consistently used the oldest trick in the playbook of small states: playing big neighbours against each other, to get what it wants. In 2012, for instance, it cancelled an Indian firm’s contract to expand Male airport and awarded it to a Chinese one, in 2014, fraying nerves in New Delhi. There are also fears — so far only fears — that Male might eventually allow Chinese military presence on its soil, thereby providing China with a strategic military base in the Indian Ocean.

The current events, therefore, have New Delhi worried, and rightly so. The recentstatement by the Ministry of External Affairs makes no efforts to conceal India’s worries: “We are disturbed by the declaration of a State of Emergency in the Maldives following the refusal of the Government to abide by the unanimous ruling of the full bench of the Supreme Court on 1 February, and also by the suspension of Constitutional rights of the people of Maldives.”

However, the fact that New Delhi is in touch with the U.S. and China and also pushing for the United Nations to send a fact-finding mission to the Maldives shows that there is a sober recognition that force is not the way to resolve the Maldivian crisis. This is despite enthusiastic calls by several members of the Indian strategic community to adopt harder measures to resolve the crisis.

New Delhi’s limited options

First, let’s examine India’s real stakes in the Maldives before exploring the various options available and their associated challenges. New Delhi’s fundamental concern is not the suspension of civil liberties or setback to democracy in the Maldives. It’s China: how China would increase its stocks in Male at the expense of India lies at the heart of Indian anxieties about the political impasse in the Maldives. In New Delhi’s mind, then, the game is increasingly zero sum, and winning it would require reinstating India’s lost glory in the Maldives, something the embattled former President, Mohamed Nasheed, is promising to do.

Let’s put India’s apprehensions in context. India has of late been anxious about its steadily losing stature in the neighbourhood: its inability to act in the Maldives will only further accentuate this reality. India’s carefully constructed identity of being the “successor-state-of-the-British-Raj” strongly informed the early decades of its regional policy. Assertions of India’s Raj tradition in the neighbourhood have been resisted by the smaller countries of the region, often without much success. However, the rise of China has fundamentally changed the equation by giving them an opportunity to demand more respect and negotiate better terms of engagement. South Asia traditionally had one hegemon, India; today it has two, India and China. Small states of the region are indeed the winners in this new balance of power game. The emerging discontents of India’s regional policy need to be viewed in this historical context.

These new geopolitical realities also necessitate that New Delhi alters its approach to dealing with the region and appreciates the aspirations of the region’s small states, keeping in mind their increased choices. In other words, the sooner India is able to rejig its regional policy to suit the post-hegemonic milieu in South Asia the better it will be able to grapple with the emerging realities therein. In that spirit, then, India should desist from undertaking “civilising missions” to educate its neighbours on civil liberties and democracy. Let the democratic chips in Maldives fall where they may.

Intervention is costly

There are several reasons why direct/overt military or political intervention in the Maldives to correct the democratic process there is a bad idea and could damage India’s interests in the long term. Those who argue that Washington and the western powers expect India to resolve the crisis in the Maldives seem to forget that there is increasing recognition today that humanitarian intervention often leads to more chaos than order. And the crisis in the Maldives is not even humanitarian in nature.

From a purely instrumental point of view, the costs of an Indian intervention gone wrong (which it is likely to) would far outweigh any potential benefits from a successful intervention, even if we hypothetically accept that an intervention might be successful. Given the fact that Mr. Gayoom does enjoy some domestic political support, Indian intervention would certainly make one faction in the country unhappy which would accuse India of undermining its sovereignty. Moreover, if Mr. Gayoom prolongs the emergency and does not restore normalcy in the country, he is likely to lose support domestically. On the other hand, if New Delhi intervenes, he will use it to drum up popular support.

If so, anything short of a full-fledged intervention that forcibly removes him from power may indeed be counter-productive. But if New Delhi uses force to dethrone him, the question is what next? Is India willing to brave its aftermath, the nature of which is presently unpredictable? Recall how the American calculation about Iraqis stepping up to support democracy once it intervened to dethrone Saddam Hussein went horribly wrong.

Second, an Indian intervention, especially by an overtly Hindu-right wing government, will push the Maldives towards more Islamist politics, something the Gayoom regime will use to its advantage.

If it’s the growing relationship between Male and Beijing that New Delhi is concerned about, there is no guarantee that a military or some other overt form of intervention in the Maldives would ensure a rift between China and the Maldives. In fact, it may even have the reverse effect.

Indian intervention could also complicate life for over 25,000 Indian expatriates who live and work in the Maldives. Then there is the legal challenge: an intervention could constitute a clear violation of the UN Charter and international law. Finally, sermons about civil liberties and democracy are a double-edged sword that could easily come back to haunt us.

In short, New Delhi has very little moral, legal and political locus standi to justify an intervention in the Maldives. It’s at best an interested party whose best bet is diplomacy and persuasion.

India’s track record

Intervening in what is strictly a domestic political issue of the Maldives would also be in breach of India’s traditional approach to dealing with crises in its neighbourhood. The 1971 intervention in the then East Pakistan was primarily the result of a 10-million-heavy refugee burden on India. Both Operation Cactus of 1988 and the Indian Peace Keeping Force in the late 1980s were undertaken when India was explicitly invited to do so. In the early 2000s, when the Sri Lankan government requested India to intervene to help defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, New Delhi declined the offer. This is not to say that New Delhi has not covertly intervened in the domestic affairs of its neighbours or applied pressure on the smaller ones. The recent Indian involvement in Sri Lanka is an example of the former and India’s 2015 blockade against Nepal, the latter. In any case, New Delhi’s interventions on invitation as well as its covert interventions have only produced mixed results. Carrying out a military operation in Maldives today, in full public view, would not sit well with this tradition, nor will it achieve India’s strategic objectives.

Happymon Jacob is Associate Professor of Disarmament Studies, Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Crisis in Male (05.02.18)

Matters are coming to a head in the Maldives, with President Abdulla Yameen’s government pitted against the judiciary, polity and sections of the bureaucracy. Mr. Yameen has ruled since 2013 when he won power in an election, the result of which is still contested. He defeated Mohammad Nasheed, who had been deposed in 2012 and who, in 2015, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of terrorism. Mr. Nasheed is now in exile. In an order on February 1, the Supreme Court cancelled his imprisonment term and that of eight other political leaders, reinstated 12 parliamentarians who had been disqualified last year, and ordered Mr. Yameen to allow the Maldivian parliament, or Majlis, to convene. Mr. Yameen has thus far failed to comply with any of these orders, despite an official statement on February 2 about his government’s “commitment to uphold and abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court”. The most egregious failure is the government’s refusal to cancel the imprisonment of the nine leaders, amongst whom is Mr. Yameen’s former vice president and his former defence minister, members of parliament and leaders of major opposition parties, apart from Mr. Nasheed himself. The President has also refused to allow the Majlis to meet, which has led to the resignation of its Secretary General. In fact, the government sent in the army to stop lawmakers from entering the premises, besides arresting two parliamentarians at the airport. Meanwhile, several officials, including two police chiefs and the prison chief have resigned or been sacked, reportedly for seeking to implement the Supreme Court’s orders. The Attorney General has now announced that only the Constitution matters, not “illegal orders” from the court. In short, the Maldives is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Calling fresh elections, which are in any case due later this year, may be the best way out.

Amidst the turmoil, India has joined the U.S., the European Union and several other countries in calling for Mr. Yameen to carry out the Supreme Court’s order. New Delhi said in a statement that it is monitoring the situation in Male “closely”. But currently, Delhi’s leverage in the Maldives is less than it has ever been. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to cancel his visit to Male three years ago, has singled Maldives out as the only country in the South Asian and Indian Ocean Region that he hasn’t visited. Given that the Maldives has pulled out of the Commonwealth, and there is little semblance of a SAARC process at present, India’s influence in Male is further limited. It will require concerted action from the international community to persuade Mr. Yameen to steer the Maldives out of this crisis, without taking recourse to coercive means.

(All of the above articles have been taken straight from The Hindu. We owe it all to them. This is just an effort to consolidate opinions expressed in The Hindu in a subject-wise manner.)