look news india
Maldivian President Mohammed Muizzu, who once made headlines in geopolitics in his country with anti-India political campaigns and statements like ‘India Out’, is now seen in a completely different attitude. Standing in Islamabad during his recent visit to Pakistan, Muizzu made a strong pitch for reviving and reviving the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit. This statement of the President of Maldives, while sharing a common platform with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, has come at a time when it is being considered a big U-turn in the diplomatic circles. While the Muizzu administration had in the past tried to reduce strategic and military cooperation with India, now his call to revive the regional forum from Pakistan’s soil has become a topic of new discussion at the international level.
During this high-profile visit, an effort was also seen to take the mutual diplomatic and bilateral relations between Maldives and Pakistan to a new level. After the bilateral meetings held between the top leadership of the two countries in Islamabad, about 20 important Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) related to various sectors including defence, maritime security and trade have been sealed. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has committed to increasing trade relations with Maldives by more than ten times. Analysts believe that on one hand, Maldives, which is facing economic crisis and financial crisis, is getting continuous relief from India like financial aid and currency swap rollover, while on the other hand, in order to maintain its influence in regional diplomacy, Moizzu singing the praises of SAARC from Pakistan’s soil could also be a deliberate move to maintain diplomatic balance.
Journey from anti-India image to regional diplomacy
Since assuming power in Maldives, President Mohammed Muizzu’s policies have mainly been to distance himself from India and move closer to China. The main basis of his election campaign was the ‘India Out’ campaign, under which he strongly raised the issue of sending Indian military personnel out of Maldives. However, diplomatic and economic realities soon changed his priorities. India has always provided all possible humanitarian and economic assistance to Maldives under the ‘Neighborhood First’ policy, which recently included financial assistance worth billions of rupees and currency swap facilities. Despite this, Muizzu’s official visit to Pakistan and reiterating his demand for the resumption of the SAARC summit in the presence of Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif shows that Male is trying to show strategic autonomy in its foreign policy, whatever the diplomatic implications.
Ice frozen between India and Pakistan on SAARC platform
The SAARC summit has been lying dormant for quite some time as its summits are clouded with uncertainty due to terrorism and bilateral tensions between India and Pakistan. No SAARC summit has been held since 2016 as India has made it clear that cross-border terrorism and diplomatic talks cannot go together. In such a sensitive environment, Mohammad Muizzu, who visited Pakistan, talking about reviving SAARC seems to be mainly in line with Pakistan’s diplomatic priorities. Pakistan has been trying for a long time to somehow show its activeness with India in multilateral forums regarding SAARC, but New Delhi’s stand in this matter has been absolutely clear and firm.
Changing regional climate and future diplomatic equations
Muizzu’s visit to Pakistan and his statements there present a new picture of the changing geopolitics of South Asia. On one hand, the island country Maldives is looking for new avenues of global help and investment to manage its domestic economy, on the other hand, it wants to keep itself at the center of diplomacy through regional organizations. However, experts also believe that such closeness and agreements with Pakistan in the Indian Ocean region, where India has strategic influence, can have a deep impact on regional security equations. In the coming days, it will be very interesting to see how India views these new statements of the President of Maldives and the growing closeness with Pakistan, because India’s role is considered most important in terms of security and stability in South Asia.