India to add muscle to Male mission

With China expanding its footprint in the politically unstable Maldives, India has decided to open a defence wing in its High Commission and decided to post a senior army officer as first defence attaché (DA). The mission in Colombo was handling India-Maldives defence and security ties.

Updated on: Feb 8, 2012, 23:26:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

With China expanding its footprint in the politically unstable Maldives, India has decided to open a defence wing in its High Commission and decided to post a senior army officer as first defence attaché (DA). The mission in Colombo was handling India-Maldives defence and security ties.

Government sources said the ministry of external affairs took the decision to post a DA in Maldives this month and a colonel-level officer of the Indian Army will soon be sent to push defence ties in Male. The decision comes at a time when the island nation's first democratically-elected president Mohammed Nasheed on Wednesday said he was forced to resign (Tuesday) at gun-point by the supporters of the new President Mohammed Waheed Hassan.

While New Delhi has had Male on its defence and security grid in the past, it wants to cement the defence ties further as Beijing is expanding its influence in Indian Ocean littoral states. Maldives virtually sits on the vital shipping routes to South and North Asia, which carry half of the world's goods and hydrocarbon trade from Gulf and Europe. Male had posted its DA in India in 2005.

The Indian establishment is concerned as China is showing keen interest in setting up transhipment ports in islands north of Haa Alif Atoll and wants a piece of the action in setting up the second international airport at Hanimaadhoo. Besides, there are reports of Chinese interested in setting up submarine base Maroa Islands. There is a 75% jump in tourists from China to Maldives in 2010.

though India has given Male military hardware to increase its surveillance and radar capabilities, interrogation reports of apprehended Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists indicate that Pak-based groups are actively setting up base in the island nation to radicalise the population.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.