Saudi buy of Maldivian atoll dicey for India

The Maldivian government's plan to give control of an entire atoll in the country to Saudi Arabia has set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi power circles. This is understandable because it would pose a new security challenge to India in its neighbourhood. Maldivian president Abdulla Yameen has been on the wrong side of India right since the 2015 arrest and sham trial of Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader who was an unabashed friend of India. Yameen has been moving Maldives closer to China and weakening his country’s links with New Delhi which is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has desisted from visiting the archipelago while he has paid goodwill visits to all other neighbours after assuming office. Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud will be travelling to Maldives soon to cement ties with Maldives and to set the ball rolling for the purchase of the atoll ‘Faafu’ which is one of the 26 atolls in the country and would trigger off a strategic partnership.

Members of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party fear that the decision to ‘sell’ Faafu to Saudi Arabia would aggravate Wahabism in the country. Maldives already accounts for one of the highest numbers of foreign fighters in Syria per capita. According to MDP, the decision to cede the atoll should be seen in the context of propagation of Wahabism for decades now and also Male's decision to sever its 41-yearold ties with Iran at the behest of Saudi Arabia. Saudis fund scholarships for 300 students every year. About 70 per cent of Maldivian population already subscribes to the Wahabi sect. There is a plan by Yameen to bring in Islamic teachers from Saudi Arabia. This will turn these schools into madrasas. Currently only surpassed by Tunisia, radicalization and extremism in the Maldives has become more of a concern in recent years for neighboring states like India.

Saudi Arabia’s puritanical Wahabi religious movement has seeped into the Maldives over the years. One of the pathways by which this occurred has to do with the extent of people-topeople ties between Maldives and Pakistan, South Asia’s largest Muslim-majority country. Maldivian Islamic clerics and students have, over the years, been gradually exposed to Wahabi ideology, which has come to shape both the island’s politics and even identity in recent years.

Maldives is poised for elections next year and MDP chief and former president Mohamed Nasheed, currently living in exile in London, will contest the polls. Yameen is apparently trying to upstage Nasheed and prevent his return with the help of Islamists. The Yameen government has gone some distance towards the deal with the Saudis without bothering to take people's consent. In the old days, selling land, which is scarce in Maldives, to foreigners would have been seen as high treason punishable by death. But things have changed and there is China backing Yameen in all this he does. Significantly, the Saudi king is due to visit China too when he visits Maldives. India will need all its strategic skills to deal with the incipient challenge.