Encouraging Bangladesh – India’s continental neighbour and budding security partner – to play a more active role in Indian Ocean affairs could add a valuable new player to the region. These latest developments could be more significant than they might initially appear. The meeting also included senior officials from Bangladesh, Mauritius and Seychelles as observers, and there are now suggestions that the three countries should join as permanent members. This reflected a desire to move the dialogue beyond just maritime security, while also steering clear of overt discussions of China. The August 2021 meeting of Deputy National Security Advisers from the three countries adopted “four pillars” of cooperation in maritime safety and security, terrorism and radicalisation, trafficking and organised crime, and cyber security. Although this went into abeyance between 20, it was resurrected in 2020 as the “ Colombo Security Conclave”, complete with a Secretariat in Colombo. This may make them more vulnerable to Chinese economic coercion, as recent experience has indicated.įor the last decade, India has been promoting a trilateral security dialogue with its closest island neighbours, Sri Lanka and Maldives. The EU-sponsored Indian Ocean Commission brings together the states of the western Indian Ocean (Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar and Comoros, plus French-owned Reunion), but Sri Lanka and Maldives are very much out on their own. In the Indian Ocean, Delhi is working with a region that is not nearly as well organised as, say, the Pacific where the Pacific Islands Forum and associated groupings provide a dense web of regional arrangements.įor the last decade, India has been promoting a trilateral security dialogue with its closest island neighbours, Sri Lanka and Maldives.īy contrast, there are no regional structures focused on the six independent island states in the Indian Ocean. India faces some considerable challenges. It is also seeking to build regional cohesion as a way of discouraging the further expansion of China’s presence. The Modi government’s objective was to increase India’s economic and political influence, enhance connectivity and reduce island vulnerabilities against a range of security threats, including climate change. When he was first elected as Indian prime minister in 2014, one of Narendra Modi’s first international visits was to Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius, where he announced a new “SAGAR” policy (Security and Growth for All in the Region). India may find that it can gain considerable leverage from working with regional partners. India is also trying to develop regional security structures that focus on maritime and other transnational security threats. This has included increased bilateral aid, investment, and security assistance to the island states. Marked changes in lithic preference are directly related to the relative sizes of naturally occurring raw materials and the implements made from them.Like Australia in the Pacific, India has been pursuing its own Indian Ocean island step-up, largely driven by concerns about China’s growing influence in the region. Local materials were used almost exclusively in the production of lithic implements. Distribution of sites within the biogeographic zones reflects the type of subsistence pattern practiced during each cultural period. However, patterns of physiographic distribution of sites and changes in preference of lithic materials were evident for each of the broad cultural periods. The small size of the cultural material sample and limited number of sites examined do not provide sufficient data to make specific conclusions about patterns of settlement and subsistence for individual cultural periods. Representative areas within four generalized biogeographic zones were examined with particular emphasis on locating prehistoric archaeological sites and lithic raw material sources. More intensive occupations followed during the Early Archaic through Mississippian periods. The area was sparsely occupied during the Paleo-Indian period, at least 10,000 years ago. A cultural history of the middle Nolichucky River Basin has been defined based on data obtained during a 1977 survey of 41 prehistoric archaeological sites.
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