India Develops Military Base in Mauritius to Counter Chinese Presence

ADF STAFF

The tiny Agaléga islands of Mauritius remain untouched by tourism and industry. Its roughly 300 residents mainly live off coconuts and fish, as they have for generations.

The pair of islands are about 1,000 kilometers north of the country’s main island in a part of the southwestern Indian Ocean that is home to some of the world’s most important shipping lanes. Until 2021, the islands had only one dock for fishing boats and a small airfield, but that has changed.

India recently built a major airstrip and jetty on Agaléga’s larger northern island. According to Indian news channel WION, the Indian Navy will send at least 50 officers and guards to staff the new airstrip, which can handle Boeing P-8I surveillance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft of the Indian Armed Forces.

The Agaléga facilities also will enable maritime patrols over the Mozambique Channel, and its staging point will let the Indian Navy observe shipping routes around southern Africa.

“This base on Agaléga will cement India’s presence in the southwest Indian Ocean and facilitate its power projection aspirations in this region,” Samuel Bashfield, a research officer at the Australian National University’s National Security College, wrote for The Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.

It will also counter China’s increasing presence in the region, where Beijing has invested heavily in infrastructure. Chinese-built ports in Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Mauritania and Mozambique have become examples of how such projects can disrupt aquatic ecosystems and harm artisanal fishing communities, according to a report led by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center.

In Kenya, the Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway was billed as a major economic driver that would benefit the region. However, six years after it opened, the railway is deemed a financial burden as Kenya’s relationship with China deteriorates.

The Agaléga islands also have strategic military value in a region where China has steadily increased its presence over the past 25 years.

That has coincided with a sharp increase in the size of China’s Navy, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a September discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Jaishankar said Indian authorities are closely monitoring ports that China has built in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other areas around the Indian Ocean region.

“From an Indian point of view, I would say it’s very reasonable for us to try and prepare for greater Chinese presence than we have seen before,” Jaishankar said. “Maritime concerns are not necessarily today between two countries. If you look at maritime threats, piracy, smuggling or terrorism, if there is no authority, no monitoring, no force out there to actually enforce the rule of the law, it’s a problem.”

Greg Poling, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean region a “strategic concern” for Indian security analysts.

“They continue to worry about Pakistan and probably always will, but increasingly it’s China I think that keeps Indian strategists up at night,” Poling told Al-Jazeera.