▓▓▓
Rusted-on aficionados of the unerringly “on the ball” 1980s BBC political satire Yes Minister will no doubt have total recall of the classic episode where Sir Humphrey Appleby defends the existence of a brand spanking new, impeccably clean and spotless hospital which remains resolutely and defiantly free of patients. Well, Sri Lanka has it’s own non-fictional version of this writ large with the Mattala Airport.
This real life ”Yes Ministeresque” moment has been acted out in Hambantota on Sri Lanka’s southeastern tip. Over a decade ago the government decided to build a no-expenses-spared showcase city with state-of-the-art facilities. The commercial venture was nothing if not ambitious…the focal point being a new international ‘greenfield’ airport, Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (මත්තල රාජපක්ෂ ජාත්යන්තර ගුවන්තොටුපළ), pride of place in “a multi-billion dollar city in the middle of the jungle”. The plan included a swish, diversified facility deep sea port, an industrial zone and a test-standard cricket stadium [‘Sri Lanka’s Debt Crisis Is So Bad The Government Doesn’t Know How Much Money It Owes’, Wade Shepard, Forbes, 30-Sep-2016, www.forbes.com;]. ‘The Story Behind the World’s Emptiest International Airport’, Wade Shepard, Forbes, 28-May-2016, www.forbes.com].
ළ
What made Hambantota, a small, backwater fishing town (population even now no more than about 56,000) four-and-a-half hours drive from the capital Colombo a candidate for such a major economic development? It owed its meteoric elevation in part to a genuine need for (overdue) reconstruction after the destruction wreaked by a 2004 tsunami, but another significant factor is that Hambantota is the home region of Sri Lankan strongman and former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa (Mahinda’s younger brother Gotabaya is currently the country’s president). Hambantota bore all the hallmarks of a massive vanity project – in an initiative that would have satisfied Alexander the Great’s lust for eponymous self-glorification, the airport, the sea port, the cricket ground, everything was slated to be named after the senior Rajapaksa!
ළ
“White elephant“ of an airport
ළ
Chinese motives in the region
The speculation among China-watchers is that Beijing has eyed off the new port as a potential naval base for it in the Indian Ocean region. Co-existing with this conjecture and part of Beijing‘s Belt and Road Initiative is that the view that China wants to build a SEZ(𝒷) around Hambantota. Both of these relate to the “String of Pearls” theory hypothesised by the US that China’s intention is to establish a network of military and commercial posts across the breadth of the Indian Ocean littoral – and extending to connect with the Chinese mainland, the construction of ”various land and maritime trade routes as part of China’s larger military ambition” (this has also been described as China’s “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”)(𝒸) [‘Here is All You Should Know About ‘String Of Pearls’, China’s Policy to Encircle India’, Maninder Dabas, India Times, Upd 23-Jun-2017, www.indiatimes.com. To this end Beijing already has established naval ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Malaysia, in addition to Sri Lanka. India recognises such a development as an inherent threat to its security and interests. One scenario postulates that a free trade agreement between China and Sri Lanka with the established foothold in Hambantota could provide a Chinese back door into Indian markets [‘China trick: Unviable port turns strategic asset’, Colonel R Hariharan, The Times of India, 17-Dec-2017, www.timesofindia.com)].
ළ
Indian countermove
New Delhi took a proactive approach to what it sees as China’s encroachment on its turf by negotiating a joint venture with Colombo concerning the HRI airport, putting up US$300 million to buy out Sri Lanka’s huge debt to China (Brewer). In return India would secure a 40-year lease over the airport. New Delhi’s motives for such a venture were less commercial (eg, a new, handy destination for Indian tourists) than they were geo-strategic, a move to stymie the Chinese incursion in its backyard and growing influence in the region…it would also, it was mooted, ”give India considerable control over how the port is used” (Brewer). Everything looked set to go ahead when the (Gotabaya) Rajapaksa government in 2020 suddenly stepped back from the joint venture with India, indicating instead that private enterprise within Sri Lanka would be offered the chance to invest in the HRI project [‘Sri Lanka, not India, will develop Mattala airport: Gotabaya Rajapaksa‘, Meera Srinivasan, The Hindu, 19-Dec-2019, www.thehindu.com].
ළ
Covid-19 and the loss of tourism revenue has devastated the Sri Lankan economy leaving the country staring at the abyss, but years of bad economic policies by successive governments have led to the present dilemma. A succession of costly government infrastructure projects, as typified by Rajapaksa’s Hambantota project financed by massive domestic and external borrowing, contributed to the national economy’s decline. The upshot? A total debt blow-out between 2009 and 2014 for Sri Lanka, domestic debt tripled while foreign debt doubled…the largest external creditor has been China, which was all too-ready to step in with the money after allegations of Civil War crimes against the Rajapaksa government soured relations with Western regimes(𝒹) [‘There is no money left’: Covid crisis leaves Sri Lanka on brink of bankruptcy’, Minoli Sousa & Hannah Pietersen, The Guardian, 02-Jan-2022, www.theguardian.com].
End-note: While Hambantota Port’s backers talk up its prospects (port “fully functional within 12 months”), the deal handing China a 99-year lease on the port in return for the funds needed to pay back loans and investors, has raised concerns that the Rajapaksa government has ensnared Sri Lanka in an ever-spiralling debt trap [‘Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port to be fully functional by 2022’, The New Indian Express, 12-Jul-2021, www.newindianexpress.com].
PostScript: Defacto colony? Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu from the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives in April 2022 observed that “China is now part of the political architecture of Sri Lanka”.
——————————————
(𝒶) the hope had been that the airport would lure tourists to wildlife parks and beaches in the south but this notion hasn’t as yet born any fruit
(𝒷) Special Economic Zone
(𝒸) another part of the ‘String’ is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(𝒹) as at 2021 Sri Lanka owed more than US$5 bn to China alone
ළ —~~~~ළළ
⍓ ⍓ ⍓