(Continued from yesterday)

This too has enabled and embolden the current attempt by Washington to occupy and colonize the Indian Ocean, and levy tolls on ships plying the maritime silk route. This, ironically, despite President Trump’s and his MAGA base’s preference for American isolationism and anti-immigrant policies.

Does the US attempt to toll ships in the Indian Ocean reflect deep seated insecurities of a declining Empire in an increasingly multipolar world also given the history and geography of the Supercontinent of Asia?

The Americas are separate from the Supercontinent of Asia by the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The US is geographically distant from ‘Mackinder’s heartland’ —the interconnected landmass of Asia, Africa and the European Peninsular traversed by ancient and modern land and maritime Silk Routes and the growth hub of the world. As a multipolar world emerges enabling the next Asian Century, is the US anxious about its global relevance given distance from the earth’s heartlands and population centers?

Are Washington’s imperial anxieties the reason that US intelligence think tanks sought to re-invent the world’s oceanic geography and history by coining the “Indo-Pacific” neologism, partitioning the Indian Ocean World? And is the tide turning? The US Indo-Pacific Command recently dropped the “Indo” and reverted to Pac Com.

From Greenland to Chagos Islands: With a little help from Andy Burnham

When the Indian Ocean was declared a Zone of Peace in 1971 the United Kingdom and US had forcibly displaced the native population of the Chagos Islands to build the huge Diego Garcia military base. Chagos Islands, called the British Indian Ocean territory (BIOT) by some, had been colonized at a time when Britannia Ruled the waves. That was an era of British imperialism when the vast Indian Ocean was referred to as a ‘British Lake’ or Pond.

Today there’s news that President Trump seeks to buy the occupied Chagos Islands from Mauritius, much like he sought to purchase Greenland from Denmark. The huge environment polluting US-UK Diego Garcia military base is located due southwest of Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

US Purchase of Chagos Islands would no doubt need help from the latest British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, who supported Tony Blair’s Iraq war adventure in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction before doing a volte face.

It was from the Diego Garcia military base that US missiles recently targeted Iran across the Indian Ocean, and US airplanes flew bombing missions over Afghanistan during America’s global war on terror. It was only in March 2019 that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the UK and US occupation of the Chagos Islands was illegal under international law.

Any sale of the Chagos Island would also require the Modi Government in New Delhi to turn a blind eye to US led hyper-militarization of the Indian Ocean. The land-locked Modi regime in north India appears to have turned its back on the Indian Ocean facing South Indian Dravidian States– Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra, and Karnataka –whose Seamen constitute the majority of Indian sailors who have perished due to the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Foreign Minister Jaishankar has ignored the IOZP declaration which was supported by Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 55 years ago. Dr. Jaishankar has preferred rather to sign up to the US-led new ‘security architecture’ in the Indian Ocean and related environment polluting war games such as the Malabar exercises which saw whales and dolphins dying en mass in Sri Lanka in 2022. The new US led military security architecture of the Indian Ocean clearly targeting China and Iran, includes the QUAD (India, Japan, Australia and US) in the eastern part, I2U2 (Israel, India, UAE and USA) in the western Indian Ocean.

India remains excluded from the white racist nuclear submarine club, AUKUS comprised of Australia, UK and US, targeting China and the Indian Ocean World.

Spearheading the UNGA declaration of the Indian Ocean as a ‘Zone of Peace’ in 1971, Ceylon’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike was acutely aware of the geostrategic location of her county for control of Indian Ocean trade and energy supply chains.

Sri Lanka was called an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ and valuable real estate in the Indian Ocean. Although the wealthiest county in South Asia by all metrics except the exorbitantly privileged US dollar, Sri Lanka is now ensnared in a Eurobond debt trap. It was forced to stage a sovereign default enabling the Washington Consensus (IMF and WB) to upend Economic Sovereignty and Energy Policy Autonomy through control of the Central Bank as the US Cold War in the Indian Ocean heated up in 2022. Because of its geostrategic location the county has long been an aid dependent OECD ‘donor darling’.

Geostrategic Sri Lanka is clearly once again in the cross-hairs of big power rivalry also given Chinese investments in the teardrop island, particularly the Hambantota Port which the US Central Intelligence Agency has deemed a “String of Pearls” harbor.

Thus in the first week of March to kick of the illegal war on Iran and the Indian Ocean world, the US torpedoed an Iranian frigate killing 85 sailors in the seas of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lanka Navy was able to save some of the survivors of the sunken IRIS Dena and provided humanitarian rescue to mitigate the US war crime in Sri Lanka’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone.

Yet there were few protest when US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Paul Kapur, declared the Sri Lanka navy a partner of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy last week on board a gifted frigate.

Kapur, a member of the weaponized Indo-American Diaspora, delivered Satellite communications technology and 10 helicopters, Trojan horse gifts, no doubt to help the US war machine to surveil, monitor and torpedo as necessary Indian Ocean shipping lanes from Sri Lanka in the next bout of war on Iran and China once the 60 day pause is done. All this begs the question, would the SL Navy be partners to future US war crimes in the Indian Ocean henceforth?

Meanwhile, the Fake Left National People’s Power regime in Colombo has kept a deadly, deathly silence about US war crimes in the Indian Ocean – betraying Socialist Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranike’s bold vision for Peace at the center of the Indian Ocean World.

It is nevertheless to be hoped that Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya may try to live up to the legacy of her predecessor who declared the ‘Indian Ocean a Zone of Peace for all time’ with great prescience. The UN and Foreign Ministry of Sri Lanka would do well to host an International Conference to mark 55 years of IOZP this December 16, given its relevance to Global Peace and Security amid renewed attempts by some NATO countries to occupy and colonize the Indian Ocean World.

Finally, Sri Lanka needs to regain its Global South History and establish an museum for the World’s First woman head of State who led the IOZP Declaration as a leader of NAM in 1971, while bringing genuine independence to the country on May 22, 1972, when the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka was born from the ashes of the British Dominon of Ceylon, still a colony of the UK.

Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s achievements at home and abroad have been carefully erased and curated as part of the wider erasure of NAM and Global South History. We need a new history of Sirimavo Bandaranike beyond the framing of a housewife to came to power after the CIA-MI6 assassination of her husband Solomon Dias Bandaranaike- as the leader who bought Genuine Independence to Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean World for awhile until reactionary forces reasserted themselves.

(Concluded)

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake