Is the Pearl up for grabs?

Trincomalee, we are taught in school, has one of the world's largest natural harbours. School does not teach us much more about Trincomalee even today - unless we study international affairs at the university. The marginalised nature of this harbour can be seen even today when we drive past the silent, deserted waterfront with its rusting buoys and landing jetties.

That such a large harbour would be a useful port for maritime transport and strategic naval deployment has been proven by the centuries of its use since the distant past. Gõnagamaka, as it was called two thousand years ago, was an important naval anchorage. Once the launch pad for military expeditions such as that of Parakrama Bahu the Great against Myanmar, it was also a landing port for invading forces, first from south India and, later, from four European colonial powers - the Portuguese, French, Dutch and British.

This harbour's heyday was during the Second World War, when the British, in the face of the Japanese expansion across east Asia, concentrated its eastern naval forces and command centre in Trincomalee. The disuse of the harbour today is in stark contrast to the photographs of this harbour crowded with shipping, including aircraft carriers and whole flotillas of other vessels during the War. Even the massive oil tank complex remained rusting for over a half century until India moved quickly to lease it during the time of the last abortive 'ceasefire' between the LTTE and the Government in the early 2000s.

Even older than Gõnagamaka, and more famous globally since ancient times, was Mahathittha near Mannar, or Mantai as it is known today. Galle, or Kalah, as it was known in ancient times, is the one major port other than Colombo - originally, Kalyani thota - that has remained in active use over the centuries right up to modern times.

This immense maritime strategic significance, together with the island's bountiful agricultural resources, gem mineral wealth, mild, wet climate, and beautiful scenery, tells us why the world knew of Sri Lanka as the 'Pearl of the Indian Ocean'. And even if, in recent decades, Trincomalee remained hugely under-utilised while a new port has been artificially created on the south coast, the country's overall geo-strategic value is seemingly coming into its own once again.

Global geo-politics have evolved today making the Indian Ocean the maritime region most heavily contested by both regional as well as extra-regional powers. Trincomalee may have been ignored by Colombo, perhaps more for reasons of ethno-centric politics. But the world powers have always valued it, together with Sri Lanka's overall strategic importance today given its location on the cusp of the world's busiest maritime trade route between the world's two richest regions to the east and west of the island.

The Indian Ocean, more than any other maritime region, now teems with flotillas of the broadest spectrum of national naval forces. Leave aside the naval bases of the littoral states encircling it, naval forces of varying sizes from nearly a dozen extra-regional powers ranging from Japan and China and Australia to Italy, the UK and USA patrol this ocean, some of them serviced by facilities rented out from the littoral states. While some of these extra-regional powers have legitimate interests in the Indian Ocean, such as a heavy dependency on trade routes, others do not. But being great powers, they justify their presence on the basis of roles in supposedly maintaining global stability.

Whatever the motives for their presence in the waters around us, our island is now, once more, the subject of attention of these powerful nations as they vie for greater influence over Colombo.

In the past month Colombo has been visited by top national leaders and officials from Pakistan, India, Norway, the USA and Japan. The largest Indian Ocean-based 'capital ship', the INS Vikramaditya, the pride of the Indian Navy, touched Colombo port, as did two sail training ships of the Chinese Navy. A few weeks earlier, a Pakistani Navy task force visited. Last week New Delhi hosted the regular inter-Army dialogue between India and Sri Lanka.

Our jewel of an island, notwithstanding the dubious nature of some recent gem-find claims, has again become a point of attraction for the world. We need to ensure its safety. That the government is fully aware of the opportunities presented is best demonstrated by the initiative taken by the Prime Minister to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to make a pitch for investment and numerous other interventions here by all the world's wealthiest and most powerful. Over several days of tireless meetings and promotional exercises led by Mr.Wickremesinghe supported by ministers and a team of some of the best business leaders, the country's strategic value was marketed and readiness shown to welcome all interested parties evenly balanced across the geo-strategic spectrum.

The government's initiative signals the end of a period of nefarious, graft-based, nepotistic 'foreign relations' that ignored some neighbouring powers while exploiting the goodwill of others more for personal and family gain rather than the national interest. The nation as a whole must ensure that future political leaderships do not allow the country's foreign policy to be skewed this way or that for either petty political gain or in accordance with ideological leanings, leave aside family greed. Only pragmatic and practical approaches and the practice of 'realpolitik' can ensure that we remain friends with all around us in accordance with geographical and cultural location as well as economic and political security and advantage. It is only such a carefully nuanced foreign policy that will ensure that we do not fall prey to any single big power or group of powers.