There is No “Indo-Pacific”! US, UK, France out of the Indian Ocean World, Stop War Close Bases, Decolonize!
The writer, Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Gospa News author since 2021. Links to Gospa News articles have been added by our Editorial Staff
The dastardly US attack vs the Unarmed IRIS Dena that participated in the International Fleet Review in India’s Nagapatnam
The bodies of eighty-four Iranian sailors who died in a United States torpedo attack in the Seas of Sri Lanka were repatriated last week on 13 March 2026. Describing the scene of the rescue of sailors who survived the dastardly attack, the Sri Lanka Navy Commander Buddhika Sampath said that the boats that reached the location of the distress call on March 4 had observed only an oil slick.
In Washington Donald Trump and his War Secretary had boasted that they had ‘finished off’ the Iranian Navy. “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
“We found people floating in the water and rescued them,” Sri Lankan Navy officer Sampath told reporters. “Later on, we found upon inquiry that they belonged to the Iranian ship.” The bodies of the drowned Iranian sailors and those rescued alive were brought to the Galle Habour by the Sri Lanka Navy.
The sunken IRIS Dena was unarmed having just participated in the International Fleet Review in India’s Nagapatnam. Had the Colombo regime of President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka not delayed (just like the Modi regime in India), in providing safe habour to the IRIS Dena because of US pressure, the crime in the Indian Ocean would likely not have happened in the island’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Subsequently a second Iranian Ship was given habour in Sri Lanka enabling the Colombo regime to play up its humanitarian role while citing UNCLOS.
In the final analysis, President Trump would do well to learn a little history of the Indian Ocean World to see where the Israeli-US war of aggression on Iran may be headed. He may need to take note of the fifteenth-century trilingual Stele in the National Museum in Colombo.
The Stele was brought to the Galle harbour by the famed fifteenth century Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who is said to have circumnavigated the world, and was found almost a century ago near the Port of Galle where the Iranian sailors from the torpedoed IRIS Dena came ashore in Sri Lanka.
The unique Tri-Lingual Galle Stelae contains script in Chinese, South Indian Dravidian Tamil, and Persian/ Iranian. It reminds us that China and Iran were and remain ancient Civilizational powers and trading partners at the Eastern and Western borders of the Indian Ocean World – the oldest and wealthiest ocean-based trading system ever– long before white men arrived on these shores.
Environmental Damage
A couple of days after the sinking of IRIS Dena, fishers and coastal communities in Hikkaduwa, Galle and Unawatunna noticed a thick oil patch along the coast, impacting the coastal economy, fisheries and tourism in the island nation. These are some of the most pristine coastal belts in the south of Sri Lanka, where tourists hang out throughout the year with a peak tourism season from December to March.
It is increasingly clear that a proper inquiry must be held into the sinking of the Iranian ship and response, as well as, an environmental damage impact assessment.
If responsible for environmental damage the United States must be held accountable and pay reparations to Sri Lanka, which is caught in a US dollar Eurobond debt trap and under IMF austerity measures, for harm caused to fisheries livelihoods and the Tourist sector by the sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship in Sri Lanka’s EEZ. The new spiritual leader of Iran has stated that the US and Israel must pay reparations for the war they started.
It is increasingly clear that the American War machine, its aircraft carriers and submarines in the Indian Ocean must be sent back to America’s shores in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
US military bases in the Indian Ocean shut down. The Indian Ocean must be again declared a ‘Zone of Peace’, as in 1971 at the United Nations General Assembly by littoral countries to seek cession of the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran spreading across the Indian Ocean.
The United States is Not an Indian Ocean country and has no right to pollute other peoples’ oceans, seas and lands with its endless and ugly wars and war machine.
Peace Campaign to Stop War and Decolonize the Indian Ocean World
The US is in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and has no right to bring its environment polluting war machine, submarines, aircraft carriers, torpedoes, nuclear war heads and environment polluting military bases to the Indian Ocean.
The US which has more than 750 military bases around the world to promote “Democracy and Human Rights” through regime change should return its war toys to the Atlantic Ocean and/ or Pacific Ocean, and remove all military bases from the Indian Ocean, which belongs to the peoples of Asia and Africa.
So too, America’s NATO partners, UK and France in particular, must de-colonize and remove their bases from the Indian Ocean. Although not an Indian Ocean county, France has claimed more than ten percent of the total Indian ocean surface and seabed as its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) at UNCLOS and is the biggest looter of Indian Ocean fishery!! . The International Court of Justice ruled that the British Occupation of the Indian Ocean Chagos Islands was illegal under international law.
The Environmental Cost of the US Superpower’s Economic, Hybrid War Games in Indian Ocean
Protests outside the British Courts in London over the US-UK’s illegal Occupation of the Chagos Islands where there is a huge military base, Diego Garcia, which is located near the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
These imperialist and neocolonialist countries have a terrible habit of waging hybrid economic war in other peoples’ lands and seas and causing massive environmental pollution.
These hybrid wars destroy lives, livelihoods and economies of countries in Asia and Africa, while de-stabilizing them to enable looting natural and human resources.
Ironically, these imperialist powers claim to promote Human Rights and Democracy with Development Aid. This was evident in so many USAID, Soros, and NED funded ‘Gen-Z protests’ for Regime Change operations to destabilize Indian Ocean rim States and the rise of Asia in recent times.
Indian Ocean Island’s and Littoral States and the Hegemon
Prime Minister Modi was in Israel shaking hands with Netanyahu and addressing the Knesset on a much hyped visit just two days before the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran and the Indian Ocean world commenced.
India, despite aspiring to lead the Global South has clearly failed miserably to liberate the Indian Ocean from Euro-American neocolonialism and military bases, and rather stepped up militarization also with membership of the QUAD and I2U2 in the western and eastern Indian Ocean.
India clearly fell prey to Euro-American Imperialist Divide and Rule narratives, strategies and policies that play on its fear and envy of its neighbor China’s rise. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “String of Pearls” narrative about China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for maritime infrastructure and connectivity is one such example of Disinformation to Divide and Rule, like the disinformation that Washington promotes about a “Chinese debt trap’ in Asia and Africa.
Given the abject failure of regional hegemon India to promote peace, de-colonization, de-militarization, and security in the Indian Ocean World, it is increasingly clear that small littoral states and islands need a peoples’ Peace Campaign to push for closure of US-UK-French neocolonial military bases, and de-militarize and de-colonize the Indian Ocean Region.
The US war machine uses the huge Diego Garcia military base on the occupied Chagos Islands, not far from the Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka, to stage war on Iran. It also wages hybrid economic warfare with Geoengineering on Rising Asian and Indian Ocean countries, particularly South and Southeast Asia as the world de-dollarizes.
Rising oil and gas prices due to the US-Israel war of aggression on Iran are set to stymie economic growth in emerging Asia economies at this time of power and wealth shift from the crashing Euro-American empire– back to Asia.
Geoengineering and weather warfare in the Indian Ocean and the use of “Weather as a force Multiplier’ on emerging South and Southeast Asian countries to “Make the Economy Scream” like the Ditwah Twister storms that hit Sri Lanka and Aceh Indonesia last December are also apparent at this time.
Recent environmental disasters across South and Southeast Asia were reminiscent of ‘Operation Popeye’ that saw the use of cloud seeding and the manipulation of Indian Ocean
Monsoon weather phenomenon for US warfare in Vietnam in the seventies. This Operation and the damage it caused the environment gave rise to the Environmental Modification Technologies Treaty or the ENMOD treaty.
Previously the 2004 Christmas/ Boxing Day Earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami destroyed coastal areas in the same countries of the Indian Ocean World. A pattern of ‘plausibly deniable’ hybrid economic, cyber and environmental warfare on emerging South and Southeast Asian economies of the Indian Ocean is apparent, also targeting China’s maritime Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for global trade and connectivity.
PART 2
Beyond Indian Ocean Partitions: Reclaiming Indian Ocean World History and Heritage
Although the Indian Ocean World was an ancient and wealthy Asiatic civilizational trading system that long predated the ingress of the white man, the Indian Ocean came to be called a ‘British Lake’ or Pond in the nineteenth century, when ‘Britannia Ruled the Waves’.
As the Cold War accelerated amid de-colonization and national independence movements sweeeping the Global South in the post-war period, the Indian Ocean was declared a ‘Zone of Peace’ at the United Nations in 1971; to be free of great power competition and Nuclear Weapons.
The Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971 as resolution 2832 (XXVI) on Sri Lanka’s lead, later joined by Tanzania on the Western border of the Indian Ocean.
The call for the Indian Ocean to be a ‘Zone of Peace’ was on the initiative of the world’s first woman head of State, Sri Lanka’s Socialist Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She was also a formidable leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), uniting the countries of the Global South in Asia, Africa and South America during the Cold War between the Western allies and the Socialist USSR / Russia. The Global South wished to steer clear of the Cold War between the West and Russia with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
In recent times, the US losing its Sole Superpower moment, has sought to partition and fragment our mental and physical maps of the Indian Ocean World, breaking the Indian Ocean’s civilizational unity and continuity with the Supercontinent of Asia through the use of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ neologism. The ‘Indo-Pacific’ divides the Indian Ocean at its mid-point near Sri Lanka and yokes the Eastern part of the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
Sri Lanka’s current woman Prime Minister, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya would do well to study her illustrious predecessor’s foreign policy and its South Asian civilizational history articulated in the ‘Panchsheel” or five principles of co-existence that were also codified in the NAM.
These principles are increasingly relevant in a world where Western Human Rights and Humanitarian Law along with tall stories about a “rules based international order’ amount to a face-mask to conceal the Euro-American neocolonialism and Cold War proxy wars in the Global South with its military business industrial research complex and the weaponization of religions while promoting Culture Wars to Divide and Rule.
NO such thing as the ‘Indo-Pacific’
As the Indo-Pacific neologism has gained traction deployed through the military business industrial research complex, US funded security think tanks and the Global Corporate media echo chamber, Israelis have set up the Chabad Lubovitch ‘Spider’s web’ across the Indian Ocean world, particularly targeting Sri Lanka, which sits front and center on the map of the world’s busiest energy, trade and submarine Data cable route.
The Indian Ocean’s, multi-religious and multicultural oceanic trading system which belongs to the peoples of Asia and East Africa has been increasingly fragmented and PARTIONED with religion/s being weaponized to de-stabilize the ancient multicultural societies of the Indian Ocean world.
Meanwhile, in films and poems, Israeli surfers claim that they ‘own the waves’ in Arugam Bay on the East Coast of Sri Lanka where Chabad houses and Zionist Evangelical Christian churches have proliferated along with Islamist ISIS networks that weaponize religion to stage violence in historically multi-religious places.
Israeli settlements have targeted tourist hotspots in environmentally vulnerable areas and mountain tops across coastal South and South East Asia– also to stage ‘climate disasters’ and Indian Ocean “Choke Points’.
France which is in the Atlantic Ocean has meanwhile claimed more than ten percent of the total Indian ocean surface and seabed as its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) at UNCLOS!!
France used small islands it had colonized that are scattered in the Indian Ocean for military bases and to loot Indian Ocean fisheries resources. France and Spain with huge industrialized fisheries trawler fleets, along with Japan and Taiwan, China, are the biggest Ocean Grabbers of Indian Ocean fishery.
These industrialized Distant Water Fishing States deprive impoverished Indian Ocean littoral communities of their ocean resources according to the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Data. It is hence too, that British, French and US military bases in the Indian Ocean should be shut down and the Indian Ocean decolonized to enable impoverished littoral communities to harvest their marine resources.
At this time the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran is spreading across the Indian Ocean World, which must be liberate from past and present US-UK-French neocolonial military bases, and occupation to end their exploitation of Indian Ocean fisheries and mineral resources.
The US, UK, French (NATO) war machine which is highly environmentally polluting must be expelled from the Indian Ocean and sent back to the Atlantic Ocean where they belong..
Indian Ocean World is an Ancient Civilizational and Trading System: Cannot be Partitioned
The neologism “Indo-Pacific” on the East and the Western Indian Ocean dominated by France appears to have been invented to Divide and Rule the Indian Ocean World along with a new security architecture.
In the eastern Indian Ocean now called the Indo-Pacific is the US led QUAD or Quadrilateral Group of US allies Australia, Japan, and India. In the western Indian Ocean is the US-led I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE and USA) to control Indian Ocean trade Routes and smash the rise of Asia led by China and the BRICS (sans India). South and Southeast Asia which are the Economic growth hubs of the world at this time have been hit with regime change and other forms of hybrid warfare including Geoengineering.
The failure of India’s Prime Minister Modi regime and Foreign Minister Dr. S. Jayshankar to preserve and promote the integrity of Indian Ocean World history and heritage, aside from the nationalist Ramayana Trail and Spice Routes projects is tragic.
This failure is only surpassed and compounded by the failure of the United Nations under the current secretary general Antonio Guterrez to call for Peace and de-militarization of the Indian Ocean when the US war machine moved to Western Indian Ocean, where the Persian Gulf runs into the Indian Ocean at the Strait of Hormuz.
As a result, today we witness a war of aggression against Iran (ancient Persia), and wonton civilizational destruction of tens of centuries of art, architecture, history and cultural heritage. The US has a mere 300 years of history. Its war machine seems to has no respect for ancient civilizations, and never mind the human rights of little schoolgirls killed by a US Tomahawk missile.
The Indian Ocean belongs to Asia and Africa –the birth continents of Anthropos, humans and their civilizations. It bears repeating that that the US has NO RIGHT to start war’s in other peoples’ oceans. There is no such thing as an Indo-Pacific, which is an American CIA neologism designed to strip the Indian Ocean of its historical and civilizational unity and weight.
China, Persia/Iran and South India: Civilizational Powers of the Ancient Indian Ocean World
China, Dravidian South India, and Persia are ancient civilizational powers that dominated Indian Ocean. This fact is clear in the National Museum of Sri Lanka in Colombo where the 15th century Galle Trilingual stele of the Chinese admiral Zheng He or Chen Ho is inscribed in 3 languages — Chinese, Persian (Iranian) and Tamil.
These were and remain the ancient centuries-old civilizational powers of the Indian Ocean World, which are not to be trifled with by American upstarts with their mere 300 years of history. So too the European Peninsula of Asia.
The trading networks of the Indian Ocean Maritime Silk Route along which Buddhism and Hinduism travelled from Sri Lanka to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia go back centuries – long before any European set foot in the Indian Ocean world or dreamt of its riches, or sought to colonize and loot an already existing multi-polar Indian Ocean Trading system.
Is it not time for peoples of the Indian Ocean World, to call for an end to US-UK-French neocolonial occupation, aggression and Hybrid Economic warfare against the Rise of Asian economies, particularly, South and Southeast Asia in what is clearly ‘the Asian 21st Century”?
Hybrid Economic War with Neocolonial Debt Bondage in the Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean must be decolonized and rid of Euro-American military bases so that its rich resources may be sustainably harvested and used by Indian Ocean littoral countries and people, many of whom are dirt poor at this time. Indeed, it is imperative that peace, security and de-militarization be enabled in the world’s most strategic and ancient trading system – the Indian Ocean World- for Global Peace and Prosperity to be restored.
The writer, Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Gospa News author since 2021. Links to Gospa News articles have been added by our Editorial Staff
Please listen to this presentation and share: The Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, free of Militarization.
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