Antsiranana: A 5 member Indian mobile training team completed imparting 14 days special training to 50 Malagasy Special Forces in the port city of Antsiranana. The Malagasy special forces consisted from both the navy and army of Madagascar.
Madagascar’s Minister of National Defence Major General Léon Jean Richard Rakotonirina said,“It is unprecedented in the history of our nation that land and marine forces did joint training. The focus of this training is to reform Malagasy forces and to build their capacity to protect the island and its natural resources and biodiversity.”
Rakotonirina thanked the Government of India, especially Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and India’s Ambassador to Madagascar Abhay Kumar in a video message, for making this training possible which will help Madagascar in protecting its coasts. It may be mentioned that the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) has an increasing strategic importance and already India and Madagascar had signed an MoU for defence cooperation.
India-Madagascar ties reached a greater level of understanding particularly after Cyclone Ava in January 2018 that ravaged the island nation. Following Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina’s appeal to the international community to send in relief supplies, India was the first country to respond by sending relief supplies, and launching ‘Operation Vanilla’. Similarly in March 2019, Cyclone Idai caused havoc in another WIO nation, Mozambique, and India sent three naval ships there with humanitarian assistance.
India’s role as a ‘first responder’ to the recent crises in both these WIO nations, successfully exposed the limits to what China, which has been increasing its defence presence in the region, can do for Madagascar and other WIO nations. The realisation that India could offer quick assistance in crisis made Madagascar pitch for stronger defence ties with India, saying the latter provides a security umbrella to countries in the region. While Indian navy has been active in the WIO region since the Cold War period and in fact had even assisted regimes in Seychelles and Mauritius to ward off subversive activities in 1980s, Malagasy Defence Minister Major General Rakotonirina publicly acknowledges that for Indian Ocean countries, “India represents a security umbrella which maintains peace and prosperity in the area”.
Also read:
- In a first, Indian and Malagasy navies Indian and Malagasy navies undertake joint patrolling of Madagascar’s EEZ
- INS Jalashwa arrives in Madagascar with a naval training team
- Madagascar’s Prime Minister lauds role of Indian diaspora in the development of the island nation
The 5 member Indian Navy mobile training team was deployed in Madagascar for capacity building and training of the Malagasy Special Forces for two weeks from March 14-28, 2021. the Mobile Training Team left Madagascar today onboard INS Jalashwa which had brought humanitarian aid for Madagascar.
– global bihari bureau
