Decoding India’s Success in Sittwe Port and the Militarization of Andaman and Nicobar Islands

By Ipshita Chakravarty

Issue Net Edition | Date : 24 Apr , 2024

Abstract: The vortex of competing interests of India and China has embroiled the Bay of Bengal arena within its fold. It is in this process that the port facilities of the states bordering the Bay of Bengal gain prominence. Myanmar is thus not an anomaly to this trend. India’s recent success in acquiring the rights of Myanmar’s Sittwe port has accorded a degree of leverage to the former. A simultaneous development in India’s stance in the Bay of Bengal arena has been the military upgradation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI). The article endeavours to analyse the twin developments in the Bay of Bengal arena.

Introduction

The strategic location of Myanmar has resurfaced in the geopolitical discourse with the Sino-India rivalry manifesting itself in the Bay of Bengal. As far as India is concerned, Myanmar constitutes a gateway for peddling its Act East Policy and enhancing its interaction with the Southeast Asian nation-states. Myanmar also emerges as yet another gateway for China to make its forays into the Bay of Bengal and ultimately the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

As the greater game of rebalancing each other unfurls in Myanmar, both the suitors, namely India and China, are observed to be inaugurating infrastructural projects in the Myanmar. Myanmar has thus emerged as a ground for the tussle of influence between the two Asiatic giants.

China’s Advances in Myanmar

In an attempt to circumvent the Malacca conundrum and diversify its energy supply chain, China has embarked on constructing different ways to enter the IOR. Further, to replenish its landlocked southern province of Yunan, China has turned towards reaping the benefits from ‘Pauk-Phaw’ or the China-Myanmar brotherhood.¹

In 2016, the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC) secured the contract to develop deep-water port facilities and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Kyakpyu, a coastal area of Myanmar. Although the talks to develop the deep-water port were initiated in 2007, the project had been significantly delayed due to the governmental instability in Myanmar and its subsequent takeover by the military, Tatmadaw, the crisis in the Rakhine province and Covid.²

However, it was in December 2023 that the stalled project was revived by an agreement between Myanmar and China.³It is to be noted that the development of China’s outlet to the IOR via Myanmar precedes the enunciation of its grand Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).⁴

As a subset of its flagship venture the BRI, China in 2018 endorsed an agreement with Myanmar to initiate the construction of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Subsequently, three Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) were signed to consolidate the overarching project of CMEC along with its various components.

Under the aegis of the project, Yunan’s capital, Kunming, is to be connected via road to Myanmar’s Kyaukpyu and Yangon. The relinquished project of establishing a railway line between Kunming and Kyaukpyu was revived.⁵However, the most vital component of the entire project has been the installation of an oil pipeline from Kunming to Kyakpyu by China.

Although China’s piecemeal penetration into Myanmar has been thwarted by the latter getting involved in acivil war, the former’s overwhelming presence in India’s neighbourhood is a raison d’etre for India’s concern.Firstly, the aiding and abetting of the Northeast insurgents in India by China since the late 1960s have often raised red flags in New Delhi.

Constant funding, training and replenishment of warlike equipment and stores of the insurgents by China have been meticulously recorded in a 1960s report by the Central Intelligence of America (CIA).⁶Secondly, since 1994, Coco Island has been leased to China. The enhancement of the surveillance capacity of Coco Island has alarmed New Delhi. The Chinese have also been reported to have established listening posts in Manaung, Zadetkyiin and Hainggyi along the Myanmarese coastline bordering the Andaman Sea.Myanmar’s Coco Island is located approximately at a distance of 55 km from the tip of Landfall Island, the northernmost island of Andaman and Nicobar Island (ANI).

According to the Chatham report of May 2023, Coco Island is experiencing a considerable upgradation in aircraft facilities and military infrastructure. The report hassubstantiated the earlier interpretation by Maxar Technologies’ satellite imagery of January 2023 which depicted an increase in the construction activities on the Island that include, the establishment of two hangars, runways with increased lengths, radar facilities etc. Although the use of these facilities by China remains unconfirmed, the upgradation supplemented with the enhanced presence of an adversary has stirred up security concerns in New Delhi.⁷

The act has certain adverse ramifications on India’s national security and interests. Coco Island is situated in the vicinity of organisations of national importance located on the eastern coast of India like the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Sriharikota and the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in Chandipur.⁸

India’s Green Signalon Myanmar’s Sittwe Port

Be there as it may, India’s strategic engagement with Myanmar for a substantial period has been affectedby delays, red-tapism, tactical error and a myopic strategic vision of the future. For instance, in a 2003 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview, the then defence minister, George Fernandes stated that India under Prime Minister Nehru had bequeathed the Coco Islandto Myanmar.⁹

Although no official document has surfaced to substantiatethe claim from either side but if the claim is true , then it is a strategic blunder committed by the Indian state. Anyhow, unlike the Chinese strategic engagement of installing a base in Myanmar’s Coco Island which started in 1994, the response by its Indian counterparts started manifesting only in 2008 although the talks were initiatedin 2003. Treading on the footsteps of its then Look East and now Act East policy, the Indian state penned an agreement with the Myanmarese state to construct the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport project.

The agreement enunciated the establishment of connectivity between India and Myanmar through various means of transport. The circuit comprises a shipping route from India’s Kolkata to Myanmar’s Sittwe port, then an inland waterway connecting Sittwe to Paletwa (River Kaladan) in Myanmar then two roadways- one from Paltewa to the Indo-Myanmar border and then finally from the border to Mizoram’s Lawngtlai and Zorinpui.¹⁰

Much like the Chinese infrastructure project of CMEC, the progress on the construction of the road component in the Kaladan project has been sluggish owing to the civil war and turmoil in Myanmar. However, the waterway component including Sittwe’s port facilities, Inland Waterway Terminal (IWT) to Paltewa associated with six IWT-propelled vessels has seen the light of day.¹¹

Since May 2023 the Sittwe port has been operationalised. The port has the capacity to harbour deepwater sea vessels. To pilot test the port for commercial shipping, an Indian vessel carrying a consignment of 20,000cement bags sailed from Kolkata’s Shyama Prasad Mookerjee port and was successfully received at the Sittwe port by the Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal.¹²

However, a watershed moment in the entire occurrence was the green signal given by the Ministry of External Affairs to the proposal of India Ports Global (IPGL) to take over the entire operationalisation aspect of the Sittwe port.¹³

The acquisition of Sittwe port by India has specific geopolitical ramifications, especially in the framework of the Sino-India rivalry. Externally, Myanmar’s Sittwe port is the second overseas port that India has acquired after Iran’s Chabahar.The former has greater geopolitical relevance than the latter. As far as the latter is concerned, India has been given a contract to develop only two out of five terminals of the Chabahar port.¹⁴

In the former’s case the entire management and operation of the Sittwe port has been accorded to India. It is a stepping stone to underscore India’s engagements with the Southeast Asian nations. It seeks to diversify Northeast India’s supply chain thereby, preventing the excessive dependence of the on Bangladesh. Internally, the project will accentuate and tap into the economic potential of the Northeastern states by connecting them throughthe Bay of Bengal to ports on the eastern coast of India.

Further, it offloads the burden of India’s Siliguri corridor or the Chicken Neck or India’s gateway to the northeast to maintain the flow of commodities in the Northeastern states. In the context of the Sino-Indian rivalry, the vulnerability of the Siliguri corridor came to the fore during the 2017 Doklam standoff. The roadways and railways to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh pass through the Siliguri corridor.¹⁵

The Sittwe port is approximately 65 nautical miles from Kyaukpyu where China is in the process of establishing its port. The former will thus ensure India’s constant presence in the Bay of Bengal region.

Military upgradation of Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago

India has adopted a two-pronged approach concerning the ports in the region. On the one hand, it has begun funding and constructing ports in its neighbourhood, Sittwe for instance, on the other hand, India has initiated the modernisation of its ports, like the ANI.

As a response to the upping of the ante by China in the neighbourhood, India has started militarising its archipelago, ANI, in the Bay of Bengal.In other words, amidst the tensions brewing in the Bay of Bengal sector, the interface between the Indian state and the archipelago has exponentially risen.

The process of initiating a phased militarisation of the archipelago started in the early 1970s and 1980s. A conspicuous event in this process was the establishment of the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) in 2001. It has now emerged as a prototype for the theaterisation of India’s Armed forces.¹⁶

The timing of the recent phase of the upgradation of military apparatus on the archipelago coincides with the expansion of Chinese footprints in Myanmar and in the waters of the IOR.

In 2023, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)unveiled the establishment of a Hangar and a Displacement system in INS Utkorsh, in the capital of the archipelago, Port Blair. Following it, close at the heels, was the inauguration of a precision approach radar (PAR) apparatus in INS Utkorsh.

Compiled to facilitate the underwater Integrated Harbour Defence and the surveillance system it is also responsible for precisely relaying the horizontal and vertical guidance to a descending aircraft. These developments have been accompanied by the widening of jetties and airfields, enhanced surveillance systems and an augmentation in the logistic storage capacity and troop accommodation facilities.

Further, to bolster the security grid of the ANI, the Ministry of Home Affairs in a meeting with the ANI coastal security officials and representatives of the National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC), directed the NRSC to divert its manpower and technologies in collating data of the uninhabited atolls of the ANI and analysing it. The directive also includes within its fold the need to widen the ambit of surveillance on the ANI.¹⁷

Thus, the government’s reinvigorated approach from developing its archipelago to securing the operationality of the Sittwe port constitutes a manifestation of India’s strategic signalling to China. These ports also enable India’s substantive and sustained presence associated with surveillance in the Bay of Bengal arena.

Conclusion

The geopolitics revolving around the construction and acquisition of ports has become a prominent feature of the Sino-India power balance gamein the IOR. Myanmar has emerged as another trough for this geopolitical exercise of re-balancing or counter-balancing and leveraging. While the hedging of bets continues in Myanmar, the ANI is emerging as the command post to thwart the Chinese ingress into the IOR via the Bay of Bengal route.

China’s Kyakpyu port and its heavily invested project CMEC still await to see the light of day. The CMEC, following the trails of its counterpart in Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been scuttled to a considerable extent due to the internal rife in the respective states. While the realisation of the project in Myanmar in future cannot be an outlier, its stalemate may entail two possibilities.

Firstly, an anxious China may devise another strategy to enter into the IOR via the land routes of other states bordering the southern and south-eastern rim of the Asiatic continent. Secondly, an aggressive China may take to the sea routes to look for new bases in the IOR. A wary India, on the other side of the beam balance, for now, has hit the gong with the inauguration of the Sittwe port. Should the possibility of a clash between the two arise in the IOR, the ANI post may act as a game changer for India. Thus, as of nowin the evolving geopolitical dynamics, while the Dragon is yet to sharpen its fangs, the Elephant continues to dance in the region.

References