Washington Post reveals India’s terrible conspiracy against Muizzu

Last Updated on January 1, 2025 6:57 am

India conspired to remove Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu. Recently, the US media outlet Washington Post revealed this conspiracy by India and published it in a report.

According to the report, Mohamed Muizzu became the president of the Maldives in late 2023. After winning the election, he promised to expel Indian troops from his country in a fiery speech. This was also one of his election promises. And from the beginning, Muizzu adopted a policy of maintaining close relations with India’s regional rival China. He also tried to sign a military cooperation agreement with Beijing.

In this situation, by January 2024, agents working for India’s intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), began secret discussions with Maldivian opposition leaders about the possibility of removing Muizzu. Within a few weeks, they devised a plan. The Washington Post reported this information, citing people who participated in the discussions.

The Washington Post has obtained an internal document titled ‘Democratic Renewal Initiative’. The document shows that Maldivian opposition leaders proposed to impeach the president by bribing 40 members of parliament, including members of Muizzu’s own party. The document also shows that 10 senior military and police officers and three influential criminal gangs were offered money to ensure Muizzu’s removal. RAW agents planned to collect 87 million Maldivian rupees (about 6 million US dollars) to bribe various parties. According to two Maldivian government officials, the plan was to collect this money from India.

Despite months of secret discussions, the conspirators failed to gather enough support to impeach Muizzu. In the end, India did not move forward with supporting or financing this plan to overthrow Muizzu.

Experts say that while the plot to remove Muizzu failed, the incident and its aftermath highlight a rare example of China’s larger, shadowy rivalry with India. The intense competition between Beijing and Delhi for influence in strategic areas of Asia and the surrounding waters is becoming clearer.

This rivalry has particularly extended to smaller countries in the Indian Ocean, where the continent’s two largest powers have been generously providing loans, infrastructure projects and political assistance to support their preferred politicians. Such aid has been both overt and covert.

The growing rivalry with China has compounded a long-standing foreign policy and strategic dilemma for New Delhi. For decades, India has provided humanitarian aid and supported secular, democratic movements in South Asia, hoping that they would empower leaders who would align themselves with New Delhi. That has been India’s policy. But in recent times, India has often run counter to these democratic ideals, fueling local resentment through aggressive interventions against elected leaders that appear to have moved the powers concerned closer to Pakistan and, more recently, China.

The Maldives, an archipelago of 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean, is a Muslim-majority nation of just over half a million people. The archipelago has become one of the most contested areas in the world over the past decade. Some of the islands are the size of several football fields, and important shipping routes between the Middle East and Asia pass through them. Indian officials have been warning about potential Chinese installations on the islands, fearing that they could be used to monitor maritime traffic or even spot the movements of Chinese warships and submarines.

In this regard, former RAW chief Hormis Tharakan told the Washington Post, “Establishing a presence in the Maldives—whether India, China or anyone else can do it—would significantly increase their capabilities over a large part of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.”

Hormis Tharakan worked on Maldives-related issues during his tenure. But he claimed to know nothing about current events. “It is very important for India to maintain a secure and stable relationship with its closest neighbors like the Maldives,” Hormis said.