Thanks to quick intervention by India, the attempt at coup in Maldives islands has ended – and without loss of lives. It is to the government’s credit that it acted within hours of receiving an appeal for help from President Gayoom who had mercifully managed to elude the invaders. By 10 p.m. on Thursday (the day of the coup and the appeal), Indian paratroopers had landed in Male ready to take on the mercenaries, were the latter to resist which they did not. Indeed, by the time this appears in print, most of the troops would be back home. By any reckoning, this has been a remarkable operation, though its quick and easy success has been due largely to the unwillingness of the mercenaries to engage the Indian troops. Apparently they were neither well motivated nor well led. Be that as it may, however, as in Sri Lanka’s case a little over a year ago, India has once again risen to its responsibilities as a pre-eminent power in the region. As in Sri Lanka’s case, the United States has been the first to fully endorse the Indian decision, thus reaffirming that it genuinely accepts that New Delhi is entitled to intervene in the region in the interest of order and stability.
This, of course, does not mean either that India should see itself as some kind of sub-superpower in the region; or that it is equipped to intervene or should intervene except in very special cases such as Sri Lanka and Maldives; or that we need US endorsement to undertake moves which we regard vital in our national interest. India is not a sub-superpower; no other country is in Asia or elsewhere, not even China; the Indian armed forces are equipped and trained for defensive purposes and should so remain; in this age of mass awareness and mobilization even the superpowers have found the costs of intervention unacceptably high, for example, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the United States not only in Vietnam but also in Lebanon more recently. And it is self-evident that we are not a US ally participating in some overall US plan for stability and order in Asia; we take our decisions for our own reasons. But there are cases where India cannot just afford to sit back. The prospect of a civil war followed by partition of Sri Lanka was one such case; it remains so despite the price we have paid in terms of the lives of our jawans and officers; it is irresponsible to talk of withdrawing the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) unless Colombo asks us to do for domestic reasons which we cannot ignore – again whatever the cost and the consequence. The attempted overthrow of a duly elected government in Maldives fails in the same category. Incidentally, it may be recalled that India intervened effectively to help overthrow the outdated and repressive Rana regime in Nepal in 1950. The decision was justified even though the restored monarchy has not been either sufficiently grateful to us after the death of King Tribhuvan or sufficiently responsive to the democratic urges of the Nepali people.
From the accounts available at the time-of writing, it would appear that the abortive coup is the handiwork of the former President Naseer and his supporters living in exile in Singapore and Sri Lanka; he has attempted coups earlier in 1980 and 1983. Naseer is known to have some Islamic connections. But it is not possible to say at this stage whether those connections have been active in the present case, and if active, how active. While on the face of it, Naseer could not have recruited 400 mercenaries without access to substantial funds, these could well have come from businessmen associated with him now in exile. We just do not know. On the face of it, the effort has been so poorly organised that it is difficult to believe that a significant power has been substantially involved. But the agencies in question are not known to be particularly efficient. Meanwhile from the course of events on Thursday it does not appear that the government of India was aware in advance of the possibility of a coup in Maldives before the invaders in fact landed there and made a bid to capture important leaders and installations in Male. If this is indeed the case, Indian intelligence has again failed. This will be a shame because our intelligence in Sri Lanka must be pretty thick on the ground in view of the presence of our forces there and if it cannot detect the recruitment of as many as 400 mercenaries, there must be something drastically wrong with it. We do not assume this is be true. But we must confess we do not feel assured.