Here’s another white elephant that’s going to get your knickers in a twist.
5 to 8 laari out of every rufiyaa we earn is spent on our Defence Ministry. It’s little wonder some estimates place the Maldives next only to Israel in terms of military spending as a percentage of GDP.
Its been over a year since Gayoom’s government, often alleged by opponents to be a police state, was voted out in the first multiparty elections that catapulted Nasheed, the most vociferous advocate of human rights and democracy this country ever produced, to the country’s highest office.
I for one believed the end of ‘the police state’ and heralding of democracy would inevitably ease military spending freeing up resources for the more urgent priorities.
My optimism is short-lived. The first democratically elected Government of Maldives spent a staggering Rf 613million, up Rf41million from Gayoom’s final year, during its first year. And over the medium term the trend is all set to continue unabated.
On Wikipedia’s list of countries by military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, the Maldives placed on the 15th seems to be somewhat of an oddity. No one would have raised an eyebrow if the Maldives is an oil rich Arab state or we had a history of armed conflicts.
Now, for the biggest and the most controversial question: does a country the size and nature of Maldives need to spend such vast sums of money on maintaining this disproportionately large army to thwart a make-believe threat?
The world’s richest country Liechtenstein, with a per capita income a whopping 30 times more than ours, has no armed forces. Mauritius with a population four times that of the Maldives and a per capita income of over USD 12thousand doesn’t have one either. Andorra, Costa Rica, Dominica, Marshall islands, Monaco, Panama, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Samoa, Solomon islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu are all independent states that, to my reckoning, aren’t very different from the Maldives that are managing the affairs of their statehood with no standing army.
Finally, here’s the saddest part of the story. Our finance minister embroiled in a frivolous conspiracy theory about our CSC seems to be totally oblivious to this colossal white elephant we are keeping mostly to attend to rather mundane affairs of statehood such as, ahem, keeping rodent infestations at bay. ;-)
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18 comments:
another good post naimbey.
This whole thing is a big farce. As you have said we all believed that the army police and all other institutions will be reformed by the new Government. But the truth is these people are also not working to improve things or to make things better for the common man. Now it looks like as if Civil Service is the only thing Anni and Ali Hashim can think of. They are always tormenting the poor civil servants when there are other areas where spending cuts could also be done very well.
Its good that you are bringing out these issues supported by facts. Its not just the civil service. As you have said we are spending too much on religion. And also way too much on maintaining an army thats of little use to us. Comon, we know that India is our defacto protector. we know that india will continue to look after our defence. all the countries in the region knows this. the world knows this. So why maintain a 6000 strong army thats given promotions, colours and badges and benefits like in no other instituion every few months. Every week we hear that some new people are promoted to some generals rank. today also shamal and nilam are made some brigadier general. For Jesus sake, generals for what? to do what?
Now Anni isnt talking about any of these important issues that he used to talk about. We voted for him not because he was going to win the 14th place in the cutest president race. We voted to him becasue we genuinely believed that this man was going to get things run better. But the man is now as good as dead. He has his caligula friend as the defense minister. And he doesnt want to bring any real change to the institution. Infact as you have said the military budget only increased under Anni.
disband the army! thats the solution. We dont need these highly paid generals just to wear the medals and colours.
The Maldivian Army is weak, a massive behemoth; designed by an era of dictators to impose terror.
Our "national security" is handled by India, the Policeman of South Asia.
thank you for bringing these to public attention.
I am willing to go as far as to say Army is a complete failure and waste. failure in the sense to understand the root causes (when it concerns human behavior) and bridging the differences between countries, when countries fight for resources. i know not everyone would agree.
Its all very wrong isn't it. What is the illusion here?
naimbe,
I guess finally the silly policies of finance ministry is forcing you to finally acknowledge that Ali Hashim after all isnt such a great finance minister as you have said in some earlier posts.
Its really a pity that Anni and Ali hashim is running after the civil service and doing nothing about this behemoth. As shadow runner and bodu kanneli says our national security is already taken careof by India. Why are we wasting so much of money on keeping such a massive army. As naimbe says the richest country in the world has no army.
salam
Didi
i think it important to have you will never know whats going future... like u said huge percent is spend on military. but other countries u said like Monaco, it security is responsibility of france Vatican-Italy etc
naimbe,
You are wrong this time. We need to build a defence force as big and strong as possible. Hers why we need to do that.
a. our islands are very small. its not enought for our people to live. We need to be prepared to create more 'lebensraum' for the Dhivehi peoople. We should be prepared to recapture our Minicoy island on the north and Diego Garcia on South. These are Maldivian lands. I have no doubt about it.
b. China, Britain, America and all the major world powers are eyeing the indian ocean in their attempt to control the oil that is channelled through the shipping routes in indian ocean. We we need to show them we are not tooth less.
c. Somalian pirates are expanding their activities. Their new found wealth has helped them to become very sophisticated. So we should be prepared to counter them.
d. Srilankan fishermen are fishing in our territory every year. If those srilankan mahattiahs know that we dont have an army they will look at as always as easy prey.
@ bodukanneli, Shadow runner, Stewie and anons
Thanks for the comments.
@Anon 2:56
I’m not too sure if I understood your argument. I think with the exception of you and anon 4:25 everyone here are more or less saying 2 things.
1. As shadow runner says “Our national security is handled by India, the Policeman of South Asia”
2. We are spending a disproportionately large sum of money for ‘defence’. The opportunity cost of this is huge.
Naimbe, I agree that the expenditure on the Army can be reduced. However I believe that if we are to completely depend on India for our national security it will affect our independence. Even at present India has a lot of influence on our foreign and even domestic policy. If we hand over our national security completely to India then we face the risk of losing a significant proportion of our independence.
hi this is interesting.
I am just thing out aloud if this is say around 5 -8% of the Maldives GDP would it be wrong to say it would be a value of around say US$50,000,000.00.
And something like US$ 4.16 million per month. Would it be possible to get some one to do this job for us as we need it including protecting our waters etc for maybe say around US$ 2.0 million.
It does not have to be a country it can be some one like UN. But having said this i am not sure of how internationally these things are done or the details that are their and or complications.
Am sure their is a model that is being worked out by the countries that do not have an army of their own.
Anywyas just wanted to share this thought.
Regards
A very interesting topic indeed. But here's what I found out from little research about the subject before commenting on this. I found out that the budget for defence includes the budget for fire and rescue service - a municipal service in other countries (so not represented as defence). I also came to know that there is a huge chunk of it alloted to Search and Rescue efforts conducted by them. I believe that for these efforts, airplanes and boats are hired for long hours and if I am not wrong, the cost of these charters are at least Rf 50,000 per hour. I believe there also has to be some organization to react to natural/national emergencies as well. Perhaps these should be taken into consideration for a fair criticism, rather than commenting based on assumed facts from a figure in the budget.
anon 12:18
mixing up budgets is a strategy for keeping things hidden. thats a very silly argument.
Now what have you got to say about this? Mauritius has an EEZ of 1.9 million sq km. Heres how they are doing it. They dont appoint generals and brigadier generals every otehr day like we do. balaaeh. count the number of officers in our army, dude. ok i almost forgot heres how mauritius does it.
this country has 1.28million people, a huge EEZ and is much richer than us.
All military, police, and security functions are carried out by 10,000 active-duty personnel under the command of the Commissioner of Police. The 8,000-member National Police is responsible for domestic law enforcement. The 1,400-member Special Mobile Force (SMF) and the 688-member National Coast Guard are the only two paramilitary units in Mauritius. Both units are composed of police officers on lengthy rotations to those services.
The SMF is organized as a ground infantry unit and engages extensively in civic works projects. The Coast Guard has four patrol craft for search-and-rescue missions and surveillance of territorial waters. A 100-member police helicopter squadron assists in search-and-rescue operations. There also is a special supporting unit of 270 members trained in riot control.
Military advisers from the United Kingdom and India work with the SMF, the Coast Guard, and the Police Helicopter Unit, and Mauritian police officers are trained in the United Kingdom, India, and France.
Great argument. In numbers, you say it has 10,000 where as we have...I believe less than half of it? Another thing - mauritius, while and island nation , is not an archipelago like us, has fewer islands with high ground meaning they can have radars that can scan 100s of kilometers, to do the same thing. Concurring with a comment earlier, we can privatize the armed forces like everything else and viola, the government will not have to budget a single laari. There is such a thing patriots call sovereignty and independence, which matters to me fortunately.
This sovereignty argument is ill-placed here.
Do you (anyone who takes this sovereignty line) assume that Mauritius and other small countries that follow the model (Anon 6:17) have effectively no sovereignty.
Their models only show the reality of the situation of most smaller states like us.
What is better?
A notion of egoistic sovereignty in name that makes us bid all our national assets and resources to foreign countries to feed our national debt?...
Or a more realistic notion of our sovereignty which can ensure that we still can remain masters of our own fate?
naimbe,
another issue you have forgotten to mention is that in the list of countries with the highest military spending a large majority are muslim countries.
I think you need to do some research into this. There is some serious correlation between military spending and Islam.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2010/02/19/greece-is-far-from-the-eu-s-only-joker.aspx
Good post Naimbe. Here are some of my thoughts.
First, lets look at our needs and capability. The Maldives does not face any conventional threat (a war with an army of another country or such). And even IF that was a possibility, its no where near possible for us with our financial as well as manpower resources to be able to face a conventional threat without an external help. So that means in either case we should rule out trying to organize or build up our selves for a conventional threat.
So what do we need? What we are likely to face is assymetric threats as is the current trend worldwide (meaning terrorism). apart from that protecting our waters from poaching and illegal fishing, Search And Rescue, anti-piracy and disaster relief.
So thats what our forces need to be built to counter. So for that kind of threat, what is required? First and foremost we need a capable and well equiped Coast Guard. Not huge warships, but a good quantity of small and medium patrol vessels to control our waters and provide search and rescue. And integrate a small air wing into the Coast Guard.
Then what we need is a SMALL infantry force which is highly deployable to face threats such as terrorism and such.
And if you look more at the defence budget, almost the whole lot is spend on current expenditure! thats even more worryin. cos we are spending such a huge amount and theres basically no capital improvement in the force.
Our force currently too land oriented and maintains a large infantry force with no real capability in the Coast Guard. And another factor is the top heavy structure. As of now we have 8, yes 8 Brigadier Generals! thats for about 3000 men force!
To give a comparison, in standard military organization, 3000 to 5000 men forms a brigade. And that brigade is commanded by a SINGLE Colonel or Brigadier General.
So what we have here is a force of brigade strength with 8 Brigadier Generals! Given that the force is of unique nature and a national defence force, the higher levels might have an elevated rank to make it comparable to other nations. Such as having a Major General as the Chief. But having 8 one star generals would be a joke!
@ anon 7:32
Thanks for your very informative comment. Your comment has answered a lot of questions I’ve had for a long time.
From your comment I understand we only need a SINGLE Colonel or Brigadier General to command our 3000 to 5000 men in uniform. I wonder who advised our commander in chief to appoint the 8 one star generals that you’ve mentioned. But then I guess it’s understandable given the fact that we have 77parliamentarians, 54 state ministers, 75 deputy ministers and over 29 thousand civil servants to manage the affairs of just over 300 thousand people.
@ U 7:24
very strong argument indeed!
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